Metal Gear Solid: a video game that is a science-fiction work more philosophical and convoluted than The Matrix, more anxiety-ridden with the looming milestone of the 21st century than Radiohead’s OK Computer, and more wrought with paranoia regarding government conspiracies than portly American filmmaker Michael Moore. It’s also considered a landmark mark title for the medium of video games. Its launch year of 1998 had some steep competition. Banjo-Kazooie nearly perfected the 3D platforming formula established by Super Mario 64, Half-Life provided stark innovation for the single-player first-person shooter experience, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time translated the elements of The Legend of Zelda so remarkably that it was quickly considered to be the greatest game of all time. Metal Gear Solid is considered to be among the ranks of these early 3D titans. 1998 was the year that proved these newfangled 3D polygons weren’t just a phase but a changing of the new guard for gaming. While all of these titles deserve every bit of praise they get, I’d argue that Metal Gear Solid was the most impressive.

The outstanding aspects of Metal Gear Solid are too numerous to briefly summarize. The other three games from 1998 that were previously mentioned are impressive in their own right, but Metal Gear Solid was on a whole other level. Metal Gear Solid is the brainchild of Hideo Kojima, an iconic figure in the video game industry and arguably the finest example of a video game auteur. His eccentric vision spurred by his love of film fostered the question: can the gaming medium be a cinematic spectacle and be as narratively rich? As one could see from the final product of his masterwork, the answer to that question was yes. Metal Gear Solid pushed the boundaries of what we all thought was capable in a video game. In a period when the medium was still juggling with the new 3D capabilities, Kojima took it a step further, and his baffling ambition created something way before its time and also managed to make it a work of quality. Of course, this was 23 years ago, and the passage of time was not kind to many aspects of this game’s presentation and gameplay. Compared to future cinematic games and other games in the Metal Gear Solid franchise, the first Metal Gear Solid tends to be regarded in a similar breath of respect to other early 3D games. Most people will argue that it’s an important game, but its incredibly dated aspects sully its replayability decades onward. Judging from my non-nostalgic perspective of playing Metal Gear Solid, I’d argue that Metal Gear Solid still retains its impressive qualities.

The groundbreaking cinematic qualities of Metal Gear Solid are readily apparent as early as the opening cutscene. One of the first screens presents itself as a “Hideo Kojima Game”, stamping his name on the title to signify his distinctive vision like Jean-Luc Godard or Quentin Tarantino. The first visual of the game is a submarine treading through dark, frigid water accompanied by some nifty water effects. The operations inside the submarine are depicted as intricately as something from Das Boot. A voiceover gives the details of a classified espionage mission to Solid Snake, the special operative assigned to this daunting escapade. A group of highly capable terrorists known as FOXHOUND possess nuclear weapons and have threatened to unleash them on American soil if their demands are not met. They have also taken hostages involved in the nuclear device’s inception as collateral. Their stronghold is located on Shadow Moses Island, located in the center of the Alaskan arctic, surrounded by the Bering Sea. Snake’s mission is to rescue the two hostages and find out more information about FOXHOUND's nuke launching capabilities and the intricacies of their plan. As he ejects himself from the missile and arrives on Shadow Moses Island, he swims up to a cargo bay as a point of entry.

Most people who argue against Metal Gear Solid’s lasting appeal usually poke and prod at the graphics. Admittedly, the rudimentary 3D graphics commonplace in this era of gaming are quite jarring. The backgrounds are heavily compressed, which in turn makes the dark, oppressive look and tone of Shadow Moses look murky and monochrome with age. The atmosphere Kojima intended to convey isn’t as effective when the player can’t discern what they are looking at. The more dated aspect of the graphics that is more popularly criticized is the character animations. They are just as compressed as the backgrounds, with the added awkwardness of the stilted movements of each character. The mouths of the characters don’t budge in the slightest, maybe proving a point that Kojima was perhaps too ambitious to create a cinematic game during a period where 3D graphics were still so primitive.

With all of the dated aspects in mind that I cannot overlook, I will make something clear in the game’s defense. The graphics of a game and its presentation aren’t necessarily interchangeable. While the graphics of the game couldn’t be more endemic to the early 3D era, the game's direction is still masterful. Judging by the opening cutscene of the game, the intended spectacle is still present now as it was in 1998. The opening visual of the submarine verging closer to the screen while moving is like the opening scene of Star Wars, plunging the viewer into the action with an alluring, ambiguous scope. The wide-ranged shots of the environment surrounding Shadow Moses Island illustrate the breadth of the hostile landscape. As Snake exits the SDV, he ascends to the glimmering surface as the screen fades to white. These kinds of shots are not ones of typical game developers but ones of a filmmaker. Metal Gear Solid’s presentation is preserved through marvelous cinematography. Critiquing the dated visuals is superfluous when the direction holds up its foundation so well. Other impressive cinematography uses are the first-person perspectives of enemies during cutscenes, flash cuts in scenes when someone dies, and the explosions that occur during some scenes. I’d even argue that all of this is even more impressive with age because it’s astounding that the game can perform all of this with such primitive technology. The game also utilizes live-action portions in cutscenes with long swathes of exposition. Live-action cutscenes were popular during the early 3D era and tended to look cheesy. Normally, I’d chastise a game’s presentation for using these, but Metal Gear Solid has managed to use them tastefully. Most of the live-action sections include what looks like clips of classified government footage, and the grainy textures of the PS1 add a certain rarefied quality to them.

I can also forgive the borderline paralyzed character animations in the game because the voice acting is phenomenal. Along with the game’s cinematography, Metal Gear Solid was leagues ahead of the curb regarding voice acting as well. This era was when voice acting in video games was still a new concept. Most voice-overs during this period were either awkward or patently directionless, inadvertently making the game comical or campy as a result (see the first Resident Evil for a prime example of this). Considering Metal Gear Solid bears many film-like qualities, having a stellar cast of people to provide the voices is a mandatory feature. Metal Gear Solid is a very dialogue-intensive video game, probably setting an unprecedented record for most spoken dialogue in a video game at the time. David Hayter gives our furtive protagonist a gruff, gnarled tone of voice. Yet, he evokes more of a range than one would expect from his tone. The same could be said for all of the voices in the game. Most of the dialogue in the game is spoken through codec calls, characters from the outside listening in on Snake’s mission and giving him a bevy of information to aid him on his quest. The conversations during the codec calls are meant for exposition and to aid the player in whatever situation Snake finds himself in. The codec calls are usually prompt and formal due to the somewhat urgent nature of the mission. Still, the voice actors give the talking heads behind the codec calls enough personality to characterize them properly.

It helps that the characters supported by the stellar voice acting are all very interesting. One thing I’m not fond of in the action-espionage genre is the lack of characterization. These types of stories usually highlight the action-intensive story and its wavering nature. They don’t take the time to give the characters more personable traits, making the story unsubstantial. The medium of video games allows more time for this among the action, and Metal Gear Solid does this splendidly. Solid Snake, for instance, is more than just a capable force against villainy. He’s got the strong demeanor of a typical action hero but is far more brooding than suave. This, however, does not stop every female character from making suggestive, flirty comments at Snake. Moments like these are indicative of Metal Gear Solid’s sharp script. While a lot of the dialogue is very forward, as per usual for the espionage story, there are plenty of moments like these that add a much-needed sense of levity. The other characters are given this characterization through their banter with Snake, especially those only spoken to through the codec calls. Roy Campbell is the government head of this classified mission, but he and Snake speak to each other like they are long-time friends with a lot of history. Mei Ling’s frequency is only used to save the game, but Snake forms a caring, respected relationship with her while being treated to the wisdom of ancient Chinese proverbs when the player saves. Otacon is more front and center in the action than the other supporting characters, but he still forms a personable bond with Snake. He’s like the nerdy, pragmatic foil to Snake’s grizzled, warrior persona. He also pees himself when confronted with danger which is both amusing and disgusting. The espionage genre was in dire need of characters that wee themselves out of fear. The guards can also be a source of levity given the circumstances. For being militant soldiers with impressive AI working in extreme weather conditions, they can act like total nincompoops at times. One can’t forget the squeaky-voiced guard telling Snake to shut up or another guard patrolling Snake’s cell that suddenly gets the shits and comes back amused to find Snake playing with ketchup (if the player screws this up). It’s funny to me how the most elite group of terrorists can still have the dopiest of workers guarding their stronghold.

Speaking of that elite group of terrorists, FOXHOUND is the most colorful and eccentric team of bad guys to ever threaten the world with nuclear annihilation. Each member is as unique as the next and has philosophies about justice and their place in the world. Revolver Ocelot is a Russian soldier adept with the gun of his namesake. He’s also fashioned himself up like a cowboy due to his fascination with spaghetti westerns. Vulcan Raven is a hulking man of Native American descent with shaman-like superpowers. The birds of his namesake always seem to be flying around cawing when his presence is near. Psycho Mantis is a maniacal man with psychokinetic powers, donning a gas mask that makes his voice more menacing. Sniper Wolf is a deadly sharpshooter, the best in the profession. Leading the group is the motivated soldier Liquid Snake, who is just as capable as a soldier as Solid Snake is. The fights with these bosses are all incredible as they are all varied from one another and very engaging. The distanced duel with Sniper Wolf is so tense it will make the player’s brow sweat, and the infamous Psycho Mantis fight was and still is unparalleled by anything else in gaming. Hideo Kojima ostensibly used the gun masters from the cult classic acid western film El Topo. Like the gunmen of that film, Kojima wanted each FOXHOUND boss to be distinctive from one another in both aesthetics and beliefs. If the muse of El Topo creates video game bosses of this magnitude, then perhaps the film should be used as inspiration for more video games.

The remarkable cinematic properties in Metal Gear Solid are something to behold, but they do not make up the entirety of the substantial weight of the game. I’ve never been a huge fan of cinematic games as they tend to heavily simplify the gameplay to enhance the film-like qualities. They tend to come across as glorified interactive films to either compete with the medium or to reel in film people who might be averse to most video games. Hideo Kojima’s ideology as a developer strives not to let the cinematic properties dilute the gameplay, and he does an exceptional job at finding that balance here. Metal Gear Solid is as impressive in the gameplay department as it is with its presentation.

Metal Gear Solid is a stealth-action video game, a genre of game that the previous Metal Gear games pioneered in the 1980s. The games involve the player surreptitiously traversing through an area with an emphasis on avoiding being detected, or else the player will suffer some kind of consequence from carelessly blowing their cover. Like many early 3D titles, Metal Gear Solid is in many ways a 3D translation of the gameplay elements presented in the 2D Metal Gear games. Many familiar aspects of the 2D games make their return here. The radar returns to aid Snake in avoiding guards, codec calls are still present to communicate with people on the outside, and the game gives the player time to evade the guards after being spotted. The extra visual dimension in Metal Gear Solid also adds other aspects to the stealth gameplay. Holding down the triangle button on the controller engages a first-person perspective that Snake can use as a visual vantage point. The 3D environments also allow more objects to be a part of the terrain to be used as barriers to hide from guards. Overall, the 2D aspects are translated swimmingly, and the new 3D graphics unlock parameters that flesh out the stealth gameplay.

Snake also has an eclectic arsenal to aid him in his mission. Both items and weapons are designated to opposite sides of the controller that appear in a menu when the left and right triggers are held down. On the right side are the weapons that Snake can use during combat. The first firearm Snake can use is a SOCOM pistol which can take out a guard with a few rounds. The FAMAS assault rifle is unlocked later to deal with bigger guard ambushes as the game gets progressively more demanding. Snake also has access to two missile launchers: the Stinger for dealing with larger, more durable vehicles and the remote-controlled Nikita missile. A sniper rifle helps Snake pick off enemies at a distance. Still, it’s rendered impractical without the additional use of the drug diazepam to calm Snake’s nerves and make accurate shots. Snake also incorporates a bevy of explosives like grenades, C4, claymores, etc. These can be used offensively, but explosives like C4 are also used to combust walls with weaker foundations for traversal. Chaff grenades and stun grenades are used to subdue security cameras and guards, respectively. On the left side of the screen is the smattering of items that aren’t weapons, such as rations to restore health, a multitude of goggles for different occasions, and the staple cardboard box that Snake can hide under to avoid being detected. Having all of these weapons and items at one’s disposal may give off the impression that Snake is an impenetrable offensive force, but the game counter-balances his array of tools by making ammo for them scarce. This counterbalance makes the game invigorating as the player has to prioritize when to use their inventory.

Metal Gear Solid is also much more action-oriented than its 2D predecessors. This isn’t to say that the series has been adulterated to fit the more accessible action genre. It’s still a tried and true stealth game that will subtly reprimand players who decide on a gung-ho approach attempting to mow down the guards. Even if they succeed, remember that ammo and other items are intentionally scant to persuade the player to be stealthy. This way, the player will be screwed during sections when they need a plentiful amount of ammo and supplies. Rather, Metal Gear Solid gives the player more leniency with error, allowing them to take action in hectic circumstances. Snake is not equipped for speed as his quickest running animation still looks like he has something uncomfortable wedged between his asscheeks. Trying to run away from the guards will be unsuccessful most of the time. Metal Gear Solid is a rare example of hiding working out better than running. The player will be overwhelmed by guards if they take a head-on approach. When the player is forced to run and conserve their resources, Snake isn’t rendered defenseless. He can also hurl enemies to the ground, knock them out by punching and kicking, and can snap the necks of enemies by sneaking upon them. The stealth-action gameplay is perfectly balanced in most circumstances, reasonably giving the player enough to work with while making it clear that Snake is not a seemingly impenetrable force of nature like the Doom Guy.

One aspect that isn’t as balanced is whenever the game forces an action sequence upon the player. This doesn’t relate to the bosses as those encounters are never overwhelming due to focusing the action on one person, but the same can’t be said for being ambushed by guards at certain points. The first case of this is when Snake and Meryl are accosted by a group of guards once Meryl breaks out of her cell. If the player hasn’t alerted any guards up to this point, this is certainly when they discover that shooting in this game isn’t ideal. Aiming the guns at the guards is imprecise, especially if the player is aiming with a PS1 controller without an analog stick. It can be forgiven in most cases because it’s more incentive for the player to take a stealthy approach, but there is nowhere to run or hide during these instances. Whether it be the instance where Snake is ambushed on the elevators or the section where he is climbing up a tower of stairs, the forced-action sections feel unfair to the player because of the awkward controls.

On the surface, Metal Gear Solid sounds like a more intricately written James Bond film in an interactive medium. While the iconic British spy was certainly an influence on the series, Metal Gear Solid is far more weird and cerebral than anything Ian Fleming ever wrote. Hideo Kojima only uses the espionage genre as a base, engulfing it in his auteur eccentricities with a healthy dose of postmodern sensibilities to shake things up even more. Characters will often break the fourth wall by instructing the player to press certain buttons on the controller (I knew this was where Sly Cooper got the idea from!). They will also acknowledge the game outside of normal metaphysical boundaries. These postmodern tropes in the narrative are typical of the style. They might never have been used in a video game before this, but they are common in other mediums like film and literature. Something unprecedented that Metal Gear Solid debuts are translating postmodern elements into gameplay mechanics. A simple one is locating Meryl’s codec code on the back of the game box, which Campbell will also instruct the player to do outside the metaphysical boundaries of the game. A silly vibration mechanic with the controller will be used by Naomi Hunter to “calm Snake’s nerves”. I played along, and the slight tingling sensation did feel rather nice. These light-hearted mechanics are fun and interesting, but they are nothing compared to the infamous section of the game that utilizes postmodern properties with gameplay mechanics to the nth degree.

The Psycho Mantis boss is the ultimate video game mindfuck. He’ll start by possessing Meryl by making her unhinged with both ravenous desire and aggression, which is unnerving. Once he physically appears, it gets a whole lot stranger. He claims he can read Snake’s mind, commenting on the player’s saving habits and approach to combat. If the player is still skeptical about his abilities, he responds by reading the player’s memory card. Unfortunately, the only other Konami game I had saved on the memory card was Silent Hill which came after Metal Gear Solid, so Psycho Mantis just told me that my memory was clean. I can still imagine that the jaws of every player back in 1998 were dropped to the floor when this happened. Once he sets the tense, creepy mood of his boss fight, the player will notice that they can’t do anything to even wound Psycho Mantis. The TV even turns off suddenly with the input visor HIDEO in the top right corner (this effect is unfortunately lost on anyone not playing on a modern TV. Too bad.) Once this culminates in driving the player into a panicked frenzy, Campbell calls and instructs Snake to swap the controller into the second controller port. Yes, the player has to get up off their ass and switch the controller to defeat Psycho Mantis. While many of the effects of Psycho Mantis’s powers are somewhat lost to time due to needing outdated technology to be effective, implementing all of these postmodern elements into the gameplay was unheard of. I can still appreciate the ingenuity of this portion of the game and the intensity of Psycho Mantis’s fight.

Metal Gear Solid’s plot and themes are much more sophisticated than the typical work of espionage fiction. The political spectrum of most espionage works is set on a very black and white compass, often leaning towards the power and might of the western world (mainly the Anglosphere if not specifically America) to be right and true. Metal Gear Solid takes a more nuanced take on good and evil as Snake only sees his enemies as people who are just casualties of war. Even though they try to kill him, he still respects them as fellow soldiers. The game also conveys the message not to trust the government a soldier is working under, even if they are portrayed as heroic and just. Snake’s initial mission of rescuing the DARPA Chief and ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker is derailed when both mysteriously die from onset cases of cardiac arrest. His mission becomes a perilous race when he learns that FOXHOUND already had the codes for the nuclear launch. When Snake is taken hostage, he finds the body of the DARPA Chief in his cell with him and notices how strange it is that his body has decayed to the point where it is being digested by maggots in only a matter of hours. He then learns that the person he saw die was not the DARPA Chief but FOXHOUND member Decoy Octopus posing as him. Near the end of the game, there is a scandal involving Naomi Hunter being an imposter. She is a scientist that developed a deadly virus called FOXDIE, which is programmed to kill any past or present member, including Snake. The government sent Snake on this mission knowing this would happen to him, so they could retrieve the unscathed Metal Gear REX and use its nukes for their purposes.

The convoluted twists and turns of Metal Gear Solid’s plot are certainly engaging, but they are not the essence of Metal Gear Solid’s narrative brilliance. The substance of Metal Gear Solid lies in its general theme of fate or subverting its supposed absolute nature. Metal Gear Solid explores this theme under the pretense of genetics and how they shape a person’s life. The reason why Liquid Snake wants the remains of the infamous American soldier Big Boss is because he and Snake are genetic clones of the man. While Snake inherited all of the dominant genes, Liquid ostensibly inherited all of the weak recessive ones. This makes him jealous of Solid Snake and yearns to use Big Boss’s genetic data to subvert his supposed fate of being an inferior soldier by design. The theme of genetic-based destinies also rings true for other characters in the game.

The Naomi Hunter we’ve come to know launched her career in genetic research to discover who she is. Meryl feels inclined to become a soldier because many family members were soldiers. Otacon feels his work with Metal Gear Rex is fated to be destructive because of his grandfather’s involvement in the Manhattan Project. Solid Snake even feels that his role as a cold-blooded, genetically engineered soldier makes him fated to be alien from humanity. Solid Snake is callous to the casualties of war because his genetic makeup does not allow him to not have humanistic traits. He has no family, no relationships, and he doesn’t even have a name. He’s as much of a war machine as any tank or nuclear device he’s come across, except that he’s made of flesh and blood. This fate he’s accepted is tested with Meryl because he finds himself attracted to her. Whether he’s enamored with her because she’s an exceptional female soldier or lusting after her...posterior, she still makes him feel the human emotion of attraction that he claims to not possess. Even Psycho Mantis gives kudos to Snake for not being driven by the same “impure desire to create” as other humans, but his relationship with Meryl proves otherwise. His foil to this theme is the allied cyber soldier Grey Fox who turns out to be Snake’s old soldier friend Frank Jaeger who was presumed dead. While he is still much alive, his new cybernetic armor that is holding up his body is making him anguished, a shell of his former humanity that Snake takes for granted. He even wants Snake to fight him with his bare hands to feel the embrace of flesh and bone instead of mechanical bullets, which is both disturbing and sad (and kinky).

There are two different endings to Metal Gear Solid that contrast Snake’s fate with Meryl. If the player survives the torture sequence and escapes the hostage cell, Snake will escape Shadow Moses with Meryl. If the player submits to the torture (which is understandable because smashing the circle button will give anyone onset of carpal tunnel syndrome), Ocelot will kill Meryl, and Snake escapes the base with Otacon. Both endings differ entirely in narrative resolution. Escaping with Meryl gives Snake a chance to subvert his fate of being an alienated killer by starting a relationship.

On the other hand, having Meryl dead gives Snake the profound human emotion of feeling grief for losing someone he cared about. Either outcome provides a strong resolution to this theme, but I think the more uplifting ending where Meryl lives is better. This is mostly because if she dies, Otacon falsely equates losing Sniper Wolf to Snake losing Meryl, which is ridiculous. Meryl and Snake had chemistry, while Otacon had one conversation with Sniper Wolf before she died. Otacon is that kind of uberdork that will fall in love with any woman who talks to him. Whether either ending takes place, another falling action also gives a resolution to this theme. Liquid Snake chases Snake and Meryl/Otacon out of the base, guns blazing. After Snake and his compadre are in a tight spot at the end of the base, Liquid has a chance to make a final strike. He then, however, succumbs to the effects of FOXDIE and dies. Snake assumes this is when his body will surrender to the virus because of the similar genetic makeup, but it doesn’t kick in. When he asks Naomi Hunter why she didn’t kill him with the virus, her answer is very vague, which leads the player to ask these questions: did Liquid Snake die from FOXDIE because of his inferior genetics, or did Naomi subvert Snake’s fate to die from FOXHOUND because Snake himself subverted his traits and showed some humanity? Either or, it’s a fantastic open ending.

Metal Gear Solid is a game that is highly regarded for a reason. It set so many unprecedented landmarks in the medium that it’s still hard to believe that it came out at a time when other games were simply exploring the basic realms of 3D gaming. Hideo Kojima treated us gamers to something that could rival any major filmmaker in terms of narrative and intelligent design and direction. As it gets older, some of the jagged aspects of the gameplay and graphics might not hold up, but its indelible mark on gaming cannot be taken away. This is a rare instance where the phrase “for its time” makes all of the positive aspects of the game more impressive as time passes.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

One popular topic of conversation usually reserved for a focus group or a conversational ice breaker is which of our artistic achievements we’d present to visiting or invading extraterrestrials if the opportunity arises. For this hypothetical scenario, we are the arbiters of refined culture, disregarding the adulation of works with several accolades under their belts and peerless acclaim that would objectively serve as representation. So really, the choices ultimately boil down to one’s own personal favorites. A small, but fervid, selection of one’s objective taste regarding this question is quite distressing if one ponders the implications of such a task, for the alien species might not perceive the works with the same level of enthusiasm and see an individual's preferences as indicative of the entirety of humankind. Or, they could just be unfeeling philistines ready to annihilate or enslave us at the pull of a laser gun trigger regardless of what we’ve accomplished in the realm of art and entertainment. For us gamers, the scope of this hypothetical scenario has to be scaled down, for we already have trouble convincing other human beings that video games are a legitimate art form as is. When Roger Ebert, arguably the most famed and respected critic across all mediums much less his signature forte of film, was still alive and active, gamers attempted to sway the dean of critique to a more favorable viewpoint on whether video games were a bonafide form of artistic expression by suggesting that he play Shadow of the Colossus. Of course, being an obstinate old man at the time, he refused to humor any inkling of expending any of his valuable time and energy on such a “trite” and “pedestrian” form of entertainment. In my perspective, I think Roger Ebert was afraid of being proven wrong and losing an iota of his credibility upon his eventual reflection. Not only would I suggest that the haughty figures of older generations seek out Shadow of the Colossus to change their viewpoint, but I’d confidently bestow the game to any race of hostile aliens as a surefire way to prompt them to lionize us as masters of the universe. You’ll be thanking me if this ever becomes a reality. Shadow of the Colossus is one of the essential artistic pillars in the timeline of gaming’s history, equivalent to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses or Francois Truffaut’s film The 400 Blows. All arguments debating the place of video games in the esteemed echelons of fine art alongside its fellow entertainment mediums should be thrown completely out of the window, for Shadow of the Colossus proves the elevated potential of the interactive medium more effectively than any other game before it.

Revealing that the developers behind Shadow of the Colossus are Team Ico might garner an initial understanding of how the game achieves its magnificent artistry. Using their debut project Ico as a reference, the mission of this maverick Japanese studio is to trim the fat of the typical video game to an almost monastic degree, a “subtraction design” philosophy as specifically coined by director Fumito Ueda. Admittedly, video games commonly feature HUDs that aid the player’s understanding of the game’s scrupulous details and character status through a perpetual visual reference. While the necessity of such implements is warranted for most games, they do arguably diminish the immersive elements of gaming with a layer of artificiality. Using the Legend of Zelda series as a primary influence, Team Ico sought to strip the action-adventure base of the series and thematic fantasy tropes down to the marrow. Without the display of a health bar, maps, or an arsenal of items in the menu, Ico acted as an emaciated version of Nintendo’s iconic franchise for every single contextual aspect of the game. Still, I’ll be damned if Ueda’s minimalist design ethos didn’t effectively render something engaging, ironically accentuating all of the puzzle and platforming attributes we know and love from a series such as The Legend of Zelda by diluting their apparentness. Like the project of Team Ico’s namesake, Shadow of the Colossus also strives to evoke an aura of epicness through a meticulous waning of gaming’s excessive elements. However, Shadow of the Colossus did not compromise on that bombastic video game flair as Ico did in some aspects. Somehow, despite its continued ascetic efforts, Shadow of the Colossus is one of the most epically awe-striking video games that I’ve ever played.

What better way to ignite the player’s intrigue initially than to present yet another opening sequence with implied high stakes shrouded in a veil of ambiguity? I would comment that this type of introduction is a standby method for Team Ico to engage the player by piquing their curiosity just like Ico, but the context behind Shadow of the Colossus’s plot is admittedly a smidge clearer. Between the immaculate cliffs of a nameless, naturalistic landscape, a young man, who we dub as “Wander,” rides a charcoal-black horse with a fierce sense of determination. Upon entering an ancient temple fit for a pharaoh's tomb, the young man dismounts his horse and unloads his cargo onto the main chamber’s altar. Unraveling the cloak reveals a girl whose lifeless mien and ghostly skin complexion signify that she is freshly deceased. After unsheathing a glowing sword to fend off the bothersome black spirits that strongly resemble those from Ico, a discarnate voice perks up and informs the boy that resurrecting the girl may be possible via the usage of his reflective blade. With the transportation aid of his loyal steed, Agro, Wander must scour the outer limits of the land to find sixteen Colossi and slay them all as a chivalrous knight does to a dragon. Only by undergoing this daunting escapade will Wander allegedly restore consciousness to whom he presumably loves dearly. How am I privy to all of this exposition you may ask? Because the introduction duly provides it. After Wander places the girl on the altar, a disembodied mask tells us that the setting is a sacred realm foretold to revive the dead, explaining Wander’s impassioned efforts to travel to this remote, abandoned sanctuary. Perhaps the developers couldn’t let the player rely on their likely preconceived notions that this effete guy wearing a hairband is far more sinister than he seems and is going to great lengths to dispose of the body of a girl he has murdered. Some players would find the whole premise too heinous to continue onward. Either or, Shadow of the Colossus promptly exposes its context compared to what little was provided for the beginning of Ico. Hell, the introduction here features more dialogue than the entirety of Ico. This might give the impression that Shadow of the Colossus isn’t as narratively obtuse as Ico, an unfortunate sign that the developers got cold feet and decided to appease the commercial masses. Still, the absurdly lofty overarching objective at hand here for a seemingly unfeasible reward that Wander accepts without expressing a hint of skepticism presents an air of disconnect between the player and the narrative’s intentions. In the grand scheme of things, the player is still kept in the dark about what is really occurring. Also, surely the premise of rescuing a princess who is already dead subverts the hero and damsel in distress roles more cleverly than Ico did. Ladies, get yourself a little Romeo like Wander, who will trudge through death-defying odds like conquering over a dozen different beasts as big as Beverly Hills mansions for you with no questions asked even if you cease to exist (actually, don’t; for I cannot live up to those standards).

If Ico served as a prolonged, squalid depiction of a typical Zelda dungeon, Shadow of the Colossus extends the radius of Zelda’s breadth to the franchise’s open-world aspects. Naturally, because Shadow of the Colossus is a 3D game whose setting consists of the same topography as Hyrule’s first polygonal rendering, I must compare this game’s world to Ocarina of Time as I tend to do with all obvious successors that use it as a template. Discussing similarities between Shadow of the Colossus’s forbidden realm and Hyrule Field is more apt than the usual comparisons, for the few Shadow of the Colossus detractors gripe that its world is far too “empty and stiff” to hold their interest. What amuses me is that this criticism is exactly what I’ve always applied to Hyrule Field from Ocarina of Time, even though I always consider some semblance of clemency for its pioneering primitiveness. While I can understand why these negative descriptors could be assigned to the world of Shadow of the Colossus, they fail to recognize the intended scope of this barren wasteland. You see, the forbidden lands and Hyrule Field present a contrast between empty and “empty,” and you’ll just have to follow along to grasp my point. If we use the example of Hyrule from A Link to the Past, the kingdom’s overworld should be a sprawling environment with diverse terrain and a point of interest around every corner whether it be in plain sight or “a secret to us all.” All that Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time amounts to is a mossy vestibule stretched out to the appropriately spacious diameter of a hub. I stated that Ocarina of Time didn’t sacrifice much in translating all of its refined 2D elements, but the Hyrule overworld is the most apparent compromise Zelda had to make during the complicated transition to the third dimension. When the technology has progressed where rendering an empty hub world is an endeavor fueled by artistic vision as seen in Shadow of the Colossus, the minimalist imperative can produce something spectacular. Outside of the towering temple where Wander begins his quest, the surrounding perimeter is a green grassy knoll surrounded by a blockade of canyons and chasms. Finding a route around the inconvenient environment in opposite cardinal directions will lead Wander to rocky cliff sides that resemble the shores of Dover or a fallow desert area parched by the comparative lack of moisture. Lying between the two radically different environments are sections with lakes, ravines, groves, and dimly lit forested areas where traces of sunlight only peek through to the floor. While the overworld here certainly checks off more ecological boxes than the flat field in the center of Hyrule, the entire landscape is so bereft of any activity that the silence is disconcerting. Besides the clip-clopping of Agro’s hooves, only the wind is an instrument in this close to absolute zero decibel soundscape. The atmosphere is so desolate that it's as if Wander is the very first lifeform, much less a human being, to set foot on this untouched, pristine landscape like Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. Wander’s surroundings are so removed from all traces of civilization that it’s almost as if he’s fabricating them in a dream all to himself. It would explain the perpetually ominous clouds overhead that never crescendo into precipitating, something sublime that accentuates the breathtaking view. The meditative undercurrent of this uncanny world is quite refreshing considering that several other Hyrule Field followers congest their hub settings with a little TOO much hustle and bustle.

If you’re the jittery type who cannot stand to bask in the beguiling ambiance for longer than necessary, you should be relieved to know that Shadow of the Colossus will always present a set goal of finding one of the Colossi somewhere in the overworld. One would think the sheer size of these mobile mammoths or the thunderous echos of their footsteps in the still silence of the setting would make the process of sussing out their locations easier than finding VD on a dive bar’s toilet seat but never will Wander spot one of these beasts from his peripheral. To direct Wander towards the locale of the current colossus assigned by the detached voice that speaks backward from the temple’s sunroof, he must raise his sacred sword skyward and reflect the sun’s rays like a solar-powered compass. If the radiation resembles a straightforward beam as opposed to a scattered burst, then that indicates that the colossus can be found in that general direction. This adjunct appliance to the sword seems like it completely mitigates the searching section of the hunt, but this beacon is no GPS. The narrow, singular reflective ray does not account for the aforementioned arduously conspicuous and unwavering geomorphology. Circumnavigating around the terrain in an attempt to close in on a colossus will always prove to be a meandering charade. Good luck finding the equivalent of the sword’s “reception” if the route to a colossus includes traversing through a forest or a narrow section of a canyon. However, as diverse as the terrain is throughout this world, one convenient aspect of the map is that it is relatively compact. Traveling to either opposite of the ecological spectrum, whether or not Wander will find himself smack dab in a colossus’s domain, will never take more than approximately a few minutes. The player should be relieved considering that Wander will automatically be teleported back to the temple because the voice above has apparently declared it as the omphalos of the operation. The game’s progression is constructed as a rinse-and-repeat process, but at least the restrained spread of the forbidden lands has made arriving back to the general vicinity of the next colossus less tedious. Unfortunately, reflecting light off of Wander’s sword won’t double in aiding the search for the crystal-tailed salamanders and the hearty yellow fruit hanging from the trees, shooting them with Wander’s pink bow with a limitless supply of arrows and consuming them to increase his maximum stamina and health respectively. However, Wander is already compensated with these stat boosts for slaying a colossus, so the grueling trouble of finding these infinitesimal things across the map should be discouraged to even the most devout completionists.

While the aura of traversing through the world of Shadow of the Colossus is drenched in layers of lethargy and interminable tension, the path of conquest is always exciting because of what lies at the end of every route. Besides the notion of successfully maneuvering over the world’s formidable terrain, simply encountering any of the colossi in their earthly domicile is its own reward. Upon encroaching on the territory of a colossus, a cutscene will trigger that showcases the magnificent marvel of extreme biology in its full glory. The “shadow” portion of the game’s title is not a minor allusion to enliven potential buyers with mystique: the colossi are gargantuan enough to eclipse the sun from Wander’s view and even chill him with the shade emanating from their…well, colossal immensity. When in the vicinity of a colossus, the serene tone of the overworld staggeringly catapults immediately into adrenaline-pumping action as if an alarm clock abruptly awakened Wander. While the stark commonality between these beasts is their physical enormity, their environmental conditions have granted them all distinguishable physical adaptations. The first colossi, Valus, features the anatomy of a minotaur creature, standing on two legs to support his massive, lumberjack frame. Sharing his relatively humanoid posture are the column-wielding Gaius, the geezer with a white, ZZ Top beard Barba, and the gravely serious-looking Argus. Still, they all approach the uninvited guest that is Wander differently during battle. Quadrupedal colossi include the wooly Quadratus, the crudely shaped equine creature of Phaedra, and the tortoise-esque Basaran. Other colossi’s characteristics are defined more by their environments. The laser-tusked Pelagia, giant gull Avion, and the electric eel Hydrus all reside along the area of a watery channel or basin, integrating themselves with their aquatic surroundings in varying degrees, but each of them obviously resemble radically dissimilar species. The same dichotomy of colossi types is also found in the desert area of the map, with Dirge burrowing beneath the sand while the sand snake Phalanx (my favorite of the bunch) gracefully soars above it high up in the sky. Surprisingly enough, there is even a trio of miniature colossi with Kuromori, Celosia, and Cenobia. Despite their relative dwarfism compared to their towering colossi brethren, these three are still scaled to the sizes of rhinoceroses with the same level of aggression. The Colossi are a wonderfully assorted bunch of imposing creatures, and whatever common ancestor they all share that has passed down their glowing eyes and arcane armor has formulated sixteen of the most imaginative monsters ever seen in the gaming medium.

Essentially, Shadow of the Colossus is a glorified boss gauntlet with intermittent travel sequences in between each colossus that allows the player to simmer in their latest onerous accomplishment. To divulge the rich gameplay mechanics involved in taking all of these colossi down, I’d have to reveal their puzzle-oriented secrets, and spoiling them would be a disservice to any prospective players and the colossi themselves by sullying their intimidating allure. All the input I can communicate is to not fear using the superior speed of Agro during a few fights and not to underestimate the smaller colossi. One encompassing aspect of defeating the colossi is that all of them will require scaling their mountainous bodies to subdue them. This intimate aspect of the fights is the game’s defining idiosyncrasy, and the prospect of climbing a colossus and riding its backside like a flea on a mangy dog is as exhilarating and unnerving as it sounds. Finding an entry point to scaling their ginormous forms is where the puzzle aspects of the gameplay are relevant, and this may involve taunting them with the bow and arrow or outsmarting them into fracturing their armor. Still, I cannot say which colossi these methods apply to. Once Wander manages to exploit their vulnerability to ascend upward onto the colossi, he must raise his sword as he would to find these beasts in the overworld to expose the tender points of their body signified by a glowing sigil. I guess this modestly-sized blade rivals the might of Excalibur because thrusting it in the designated exterior parts of the colossi will make them groan in agony and gush blood like a sieve. Wander’s only concern at this point is continuing to balance himself on the colossi as it thrashes around trying to knock him off, for they are intelligent enough to register that this puny man is trying to murder them and are rightfully upset. Even though it's illogical from a biological standpoint regarding some of the aquatic colossi, each of their bodies will at least have a clump of fur to cling onto to retain Wander's advantageous position.

Converging a level dungeon and its boss into one fully-fledged experience? Team Ico’s rumhamming of video game attributes is pure, masterful brilliance. Still, the turbulent interactions with the colossi remind me of one prevalent complaint some players share regarding the game’s controls and presentation. Truthfully, Shadow of the Colossus is rather sluggish, operating on a framerate that makes the character movement seem as if it's running in slow motion. This becomes an issue whenever a colossus knocks down Wander and will take what seems like an eternity to recuperate. Sometimes, select colossi will take advantage of Wander’s vulnerability and beat him down until he has been eradicated. The camera also tends to have a hard time holding onto the colossi as Wander does, which can also cause him to make a fatal mistake. These hiccups would normally devastate a game’s overall quality, but I trust that a fraction of Shadow of the Colossus’s imperfections is a deliberate effort from Team Ico. Because the framerate is glacial, it allows the player to feel the full, intended impact of the colossi. Whenever one of these brutes slams its feet into the earth, the shattering of the frame rate that occurs makes defeating them seem like an insurmountable undertaking. Flopping about by the hem of a colossus’s wooly coat in a languid frame of motion effectively highlights how removed from the ground Wander is up top of a colossus like the steep altitude is making his oxygen dwindle as quickly as his stamina gauge. While the presentation is technically unacceptable, one can’t deny that the linear qualities of shoddier mechanical performance make the gameplay resonate with the player.

The immediate falling action of shedding a colossi’s mortal coil with too many critically deep sword plunges should also resonate with the player. After the expedition of locating the colossus and the mental strain involved in finding a way to extinguish it, one might think that executing the seemingly inexecutable would inspire victorious feelings of joy. Alas, the scene of the colossi’s eyes turning blank and its body collapsing into the earth evokes a potent melancholy. Sure, we accomplished the task at hand, but at what cost? The archetypal story of man conquering beast stems back to at least the Middle Ages to Beowulf and Grendel, and it’s deemed as one of the most courageous feats that defines a man as a hero. Can we really assign Wander to the same celebrated category of men? Sure, this is technically his role if we apply what little context we’re given to the heroic tropes we’re all familiar with. Still, one cannot earnestly follow along with narrative tradition when these docile colossi have inflicted no harm on any other living being or the environment before being provoked by an invasive pest. And was the effort truly worth it when every short-term reward is Wander being knocked unconscious by ghastly tendrils that violently penetrate his body? The brilliant aspect of conveying this is that the game never overtly tells the player that Wander is the real monster in a game filled with them like a contrived plot twist. Through subtle clues, Shadow of the Colossus flips the classic hero versus monster story on its head where the concentrated blood flow gives the conflict some well-considered clarity. When these beautiful, majestic colossi cease to exist at our hands, we all wonder if real-life poachers who kill animals on earth have souls.

In reality, Wander is too insignificant to be the hero. From the beginning, he’s been nothing but the subservient tool to the temple’s undetectable landlord who has been praying on Wander’s desperation. His hinting at how to handle all of the colossi at idle moments during their encounters shows he has too much invested interest in seeing all of them fall, which cannot be a good sign considering the unclear correlation between riding the world of the colossi and the resurrection of Wander’s girlfriend. After finally facing the last colossi, a vertical behemoth named Malus whose head practically brushes up against the clouds, Wander does not travel back to the temple to celebrate his achievement with champagne and ice cream. An even more subtle detail in highlighting that Wander’s actions are injurious is that they are having a toxic effect on his well-being. By the fifteenth colossi, Wander will be covered by so many blue lesions, you’d think he was zombified. When the final colossi has been conquered, Wander is no more. He is a vessel for the ancient demon Dormin, the identity of the voice whose soul had been fractured into sixteen pieces and kept in the colossi as a drastic measure to stave off his return. For the past few cutscenes in between colossi, a group of villagers have been slowly approaching the temple and have managed to cross the bridge by the final cutscene. They are aghast to see that Wander has fulfilled the endeavor of reviving Dormin, chiding the boy for his foolishness. When Dormin fully encapsulates Wander, the player gets the chance to play as a colossus and smash the group of men into a paste. However, the men are wise and know exactly what must be done in the case of Dormin’s return. By throwing Wander’s sacred sword into a pool of water, it creates a ravaging vortex that pulls Wander in, ending Dormin’s reign of mayhem before it had a chance to begin. The men hightail out of the temple, with the bridge eroding from the vortex’s ferocity as a positive sign that entering it and interacting with Dormin will be harder to perform.

Somehow, despite Dormin’s deceptive promises, the girl who has been comatose throughout this whole ordeal awakens from her slumber and finds an infant in the pool who is implied to be a reborn Wander. I’m quite puzzled at how the girl has regained sentience when it seemed proven that she would never see the light of day again because all evidence was leading to Wander running a fool’s errand. The fact that he persists onward just to fail miserably at the end and die is what makes the game’s resolution beautifully tragic. Then again, he admittedly did bring all of this misfortune on himself, for not even Orpheus was this much of a zealous romantic. Like Ico, the fatal blow that befalls the protagonist is treated to a hopeful epilogue to keep the player’s spirits up. I can handle tragedy well enough, but I can admit that plodding further allows the player to consider their experience more after they turn the game off. Really, Agro returning to the temple on a limp leg was all the levity this ending needed. Her fall off of a crumbling bridge before the final colossi is genuinely the most devastating scene of the game, and seeing that she (or at least I’m assuming it's a she considering there is no visible, foot-long horse genitalia protruding from its crotch) survived made me cheer delightfully.

Speechless. Utterly speechless. This was my stunned reaction to witnessing the falling action of Shadow of the Colossus and its resolution. In all honesty, my mouth was agape through most of the duration of Shadow of the Colossus because the game is nothing short of extraordinary. Team Ico’s austerity is still on display here as it was in Ico, as seen in the game’s open world and the liberal loosening of the game’s narrative leaving the context up to the player’s interpretations. Still, dialing back the strict abnegation of gaming’s frills and thrills for Shadow of the Colossus resulted in a game far more compelling than Ico, while still retaining plenty of artistic triumphs that I admired about the developer’s previous title. Shadow of the Colossus is beautiful in every sense of the word: from the captivating climate of its uninhabited, windswept world, the titans to topple, to its poignant liner notes that make the player ask questions when the protagonist doesn't bother to. At the helm of this emotional rollercoaster is a unique gameplay mechanic that I don’t feel is hyperbolic to call it a visionary feat of innovation. If your character ever finds themselves gripping to the body of a herculean foe to skewer their weak spots, it means that Team Ico is collecting royalties. Does Shadow of the Colossus need more convincing that it should be an essential game to play for gamers and non-gamers alike? I don’t believe so.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

I don’t think there is a clearer example of the trilogy pattern in gaming than the first three Resident Evil games on the PS1. What I’m referring to, if you’ve never read one of my reviews before, is the arc of quality that fluctuates over three games in the same series and the pattern one can discern of how the IP grows and evolves. The first game introduces a template of the franchise’s tropes, while some gameplay mechanics tend to be inherently rough-hewn and unrefined due to lacking the hindsight of a debut effort. For the sequel, the second title is granted a treasure trove of hindsight, and they use this to smooth out the coarse gameplay elements with a far better understanding of the franchise’s idiosyncrasies. This results in the peak of what the first game established by flourishing its framework to an outstanding degree, crafting the finest experience the franchise has to offer. The third game is then released as an opportunistic endeavor to capture that lightning-in-a-bottle effect generated from the second game’s positive reception. Instead of finding ways to perfect the already solid source of the second game, the third game tends to add some overblown elements while streamlining the gameplay for the sake of accessibility. It indicates that the developers have slightly overstepped and that it’s closing time for the series. I did not overtly mention the first three Resident Evil games in this explanation, but I’m sure that anyone who has played every game in this PS1 trilogy knows that this subsequent progression of games fits it like a glove. Of course, I realize that placing RE 3 in this position already sets a negative precedent for this review, so brace yourselves for paragraphs criticizing how Resident Evil 3: Nemesis took the franchise’s survival horror properties and adulterated it with the overblown sins a threequel usually commits.

Technically, from a narrative standpoint, RE3 is a direct sequel to RE2 only on the basis that the number in the title is the successive follow-up in numerical order. We do not witness how the T-Virus outbreak has expanded beyond the parameters of Raccoon City and the Arklay Mountain outskirts with global panic ensuing in the streets. Apparently, the singular situation in Raccoon City seen in the second game was so monumentally cataclysmic that we needed ANOTHER storied account from yet another perspective. The person’s point of view, however, should come as a pleasant surprise as it's S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine from the first game. Chris’s backpacking conquest across the pond was evidently a solo venture removed from his police adjacent outfit, so Jill is an unfortunate victim of circumstance in the Raccoon City pandemic, who did not fully anticipate this zombie pandemonium occurrence if her comparatively tarted-up civilian clothing is any indication. Her mission now is to use her special training as an advantage in surviving the chaos.

Jill not only gets the special distinction as the first returning Resident Evil protagonist but one that soaks up the entirety of the spotlight as the sole primary protagonist of RE 3. There are no mirrored events to Jill’s in another campaign playing as another character. Only one playthrough of RE3 with the little lady from S.T.A.R.S. is necessary to grasp the full breadth of the game’s story. However, I still somewhat recommend playing RE3 twice as a lark to experience what should be the soonest of Capcom’s “bright ideas” to spot that were implemented for the third game. Capcom has decided to (literally) cut out the middleman and omit the normal difficulty selection as an option, offering a “hard” difficulty for the seasoned Resident Evil veterans and an “easy” difficulty level for the flock of newbies that they anticipated would now be interested in playing their popular survival horror series. Despite how it may initially seem, forcing the two types of players to accede to what is a stark division of skill levels isn’t completely baffling. One could argue that someone who has survived two outings in a hostile, zombie-infested environment should challenge themselves by ramping up the stakes of their third excursion. On the opposite end of the spectrum, uninitiated players should keep it breezy so as to not taint their first impressions of the series and deter them from all other Resident Evil titles as a result. I chose to play on hard not only because of the rationale listed above but to also preserve any somewhat tangible gamer credibility that I suspect I might have (but probably don’t). As it turns out, with a few exceptions, RE3’s hard mode doesn’t ratchet up the base difficulty from RE2’s normal mode too drastically. Jill begins her trek out of the city with a pistol carrying a modest sum of ammunition as Leon did, and she must collect the formidable firearms as the game progresses. On the flip side, easy mode is so facile that it's hilariously condescending. The player is automatically blessed with a submachine gun, a first-aid pack, an infinite number of ink ribbons, and a whole other bunch of goodies. The developers forgot to include a bib and highchair for anyone playing on this difficulty, but perhaps they couldn’t have fit those in the finite inventory. I kid, of course, but my sincere issue with the unbalanced choice of difficulty here is that a normal difficulty is the solid base of any game’s intentions. Whenever I play or replay a game for a review, I always pick the normal (if difficulty options are offered) option, even if it’s a game I’ve played religiously and am exceptionally skilled at. Without this option, I cannot ascertain what the game is truly attempting to prove with its gameplay, which is why the normal mode is impeachable while the other options aren’t.

What is seriously included in the player’s inventory as a housewarming gift are two tutorial journals that detail every single new aspect that the developers have implemented for RE3. If they felt it necessary to implore the player to read a manual’s worth of text to prepare them for their playthrough, you know the great lengths they went to keep the franchise's familiar formula from stagnating. The result of their efforts is new mechanics and attributes that substantially change the fabric of Resident Evil’s gameplay, and I’m not entirely sure that it’s for the better. For starters, the player might notice what looks like a grinder contraption straight out of shop class in their inventory. One of the journals states that this is the Reloading Tool which is used to craft ammunition with three different types of gunpowder coinciding with the handgun, shotgun, and grenade launcher. One might raise a concern that this new utility mixer will take up valuable space in Jill’s inventory, a stationary position due to ammo pickups regressing into their unprocessed forms. Fortunately, the usual packs of bullets are still located abound on the Raccoon City streets, so carrying around the damn thing at all times won’t be necessary. However, it still comes recommended if Jill has a square of inventory space to spare because the high-caliber ammo the Reloading Tool can craft is highly effective. The journal tells Jill to keenly look for sizable red objects in the foreground, for shooting them with one bullet will cause a fiery explosion that could potentially blow a swarming pack of zombies to kingdom come, a nifty method of ammo conservation. The explosive barrels will definitely spark a “eureka!” moment for the player, for their prevalence as auxiliary offenses in first-person shooters makes their inclusion here a borderline cliche. The bombs that cling to the wall, on the other hand, confused me for health stations for a second, so I guess familiarity is important. Arguably the most significant alteration to the gameplay is the addition of the dodging mechanic. If timed correctly when unarmed or holding a gun, Jill will duck, jump, or roll out of harm’s way. A skill-based way to better mitigate potential damage seems like a helpful inclusion except for the fact that the timing window on the dodge is incredibly strict when done intentionally and surprisingly swift whenever executed on accident. That, and the type of dodge maneuver Jill performs is seemingly random, which can result in Jill backing herself into a wall and leaving herself far more vulnerable than before. I appreciate that these interesting mechanics drive a discernible wedge between RE3 and the previous game. Still, their awkward and somewhat unnecessary presence is somewhat of an indication that the Resident Evil foundation had already been honed to perfection in the previous game and all these new implementations do is complicate things. However, RE3 does feature a number of quality-of-life improvements that I genuinely appreciate, such as making the items more conspicuous in the foreground, a button designated to pull up the map, and a maneuver that swiftly turns Jill around instead of robotically turning her body like a mannequin on a pedestal.

The Raccoon City setting is something that should’ve been reworked entirely as opposed to being augmented like the game’s mechanics. I fully realize that the game’s events run parallel to those of Leon and Claire from the previous game, so placing Jill in the same predicament makes sense. Still, I fail to comprehend why Capcom thought the Raccoon City epidemic needed an additional point-of-view when the events had been exhausted after two almost identical campaigns. As it stands, RE3’s depiction of this doomed city is a reversal of how RE2 coordinated it. The city streets where Leon rushed through to reach the police station are now the primary place of excavation to escape the unremitting madness. Jill also revisits the police station briefly, albeit a truncated version of the precinct with new impenetrable barriers to signify that this takes place in the aftermath of Leon/Claire’s campaigns. Not only does the game fail to refresh the rehashed environments from the previous game, but treating the city streets that were once rightfully a straightaway trek the same as an exquisitely floored establishment is the most fundamental flaw with RE3’s direction. Sure, the worlds of Metroidvania games, the 2D cousin of the survival horror genre that shares the same sense of utility-gated progression, tend to be a collective of areas that vary in topography and thresholds of claustrophobia. With this logic, a Resident Evil map could flourish with the same design philosophy, but RE3 proves that this can’t be the case. The Raccoon City roads simply can’t transcend their initial workings as a linear series of paths no matter how many back alleys and piles of wreckage are impedeing Jill from crossing over the boundaries that the developers have placed. The richly labyrinthian constructions with their multiple stories that have served the series well in the past have been flattened to the ground floor, stretching across the broad radius of a metropolitan area. The breadth of a cityscape makes the backtracking of a survival horror game incredibly tedious, marching to and fro for a marathon’s length of retreaded steps to reach one objective. Any floor of an establishment from the previous two games, no matter how lofty, was never more than a few sets of hallways with several branching rooms as one would realistically expect from an architectural standpoint. I criticized the police precinct setting when it was still a centerpiece in RE2 for exuding too much of a domestic atmosphere for a horror game, but at least it was modeled just as exquisitely as the Spencer Mansion. The developers even had to separate the city into two “uptown” and “downtown” districts with two distinct maps, admissible proof that a linearly designed, sweeping environment does not gel with the survival horror genre.

It is not until the second half of the game where Jill crashes the railcar she’s using to flee the Raccoon City scene that the game provides the player with some truly impeccable survival horror settings. The clocktower is the kind of enclosed, gothic construction that I was craving as a potential successor to the Spencer Mansion, enhancing the dark, eerie atmosphere akin to the first game’s iconic stomping grounds with that desperately needed graphical maturation. The neighboring cemetery park is a competently restrained outdoor area compared to the urban streets of the city, and the underground laboratory efficiently refurbishes what is now a series motif. To heighten my feeling of engagement and admiration with these latter-half areas, they also include puzzles that are bonafide brain teasers, something that the second game was lacking.

Of course, the definitive difference and unique signifier to RE3 is the character on the right side of the full title’s colon. Before entering the gate of the police station, the gameplay will be interrupted with a cutscene of Jill’s S.T.A.R.S. ally, Brad Vickers, getting horribly and forcibly impaled by some fleshy tentacle of a colossal monster wearing a trenchcoat. Once Nemesis, the monster in question, refocuses his attention on Jill after decimating his previous victim, he’ll acutely stalk her like a lion does to a wildebeest for the duration of the game. Upon hearing the premise of an intimidatingly invulnerable tank of an enemy pursuing the female protagonist, one might wonder why Mr. X’s skin has been melted to a Freddy Krueger crisp because the previous game already toyed with the idea of placing a hostile, formidable figure with seemingly impenetrable defenses on the field for the player to contend with. In RE3, if one couldn’t infer his top-billing from the title, Nemesis has a larger presence here than the former superhuman stalker ever did. Nemesis is a T-Virus Terminator that will trounce any target he sets his sights on. On top of his hulking body that is as durable as Kevlar, Nemesis charges at Jill like a raging bull even in the tightest of corridors, as if he’s Frankenstien’s monster composed out of the corpses of the NFL’s finest linebackers. If Nemesis is unable to reach Jill and fling her around like a ragdoll, he’s strapped with a rocket launcher that he will not hesitate to use even in the tightest of indoor corridors to assure that Jill’s ass is grass. Not every encounter will involve the choice-based prompt either, so I suggest running like hell and forgetting about the potential rewards he might drop if you manage to subdue him. All of the evidential context surrounding Nemesis should make him a player’s worst nightmare, but there is something about his determination and overpowered attributes that conjure up feelings of irritation and frustration rather than fear. Nemesis popping in unexpectedly to give Jill a thrashing felt more like encountering your school bully in the hallways and making me groan with painful anticipation. There needs to be an aura of creepy subtlety to elicit a scare factor with this type of villain, something Mr. X already accomplished splendidly.

However, what is terrifying is the fact that Jill will be forced to fight this burnt-looking behemoth twice. His final fight in the laboratory should be prepared for like any other final boss, but the other one occurring at the clocktower beforehand is a traumatic experience. The front lawn of the tall tower is the arena when dueling Nemesis, and Jill will be cramped up against the surrounding walls and the burning debris of a helicopter while she is limping from an unavoidable status effect given to her during the cutscene that introduces this fight, giving Nemesis ample opportunity to have his way with Jill more so than in any standard encounter with him. Get ready to exhaust all ammunition and master the finicky dodge maneuver, because this is what is expected from the player for this fight. Also, pray a few times just to be safe. After being taken to the cleaners far too many times by Nemesis, I could not revert to my last save and explore the clocktower meticulously for any missing items, for the cutscene locks Jill to the top of the tower. This kind of action-intensive fight is not suitable for a survival horror game with tank controls and limited supplies. This encounter seriously made me consider restarting the game on easy difficulty and or abandoning the game entirely. So congratulations Nemesis, you are the newest inductee to the exclusive club of video game bosses that have made me whine like an upset puppy and raise my blood pressure from furiously screaming obscenities. Don’t pat yourself on the back with a sense of pride: if I had some sort of statuette of Nemesis, I’d imbue it with voodoo magic and shoot it point-blank with a revolver and burn the remnants.

Surprisingly enough, or maybe not so much if one reads deeply into Resident Evil’s linear notes, Nemesis is not the main antagonist of the game of his namesake. The apex of villainy across the Resident Evil series is and has always been the Umbrella Corporation that caused this entire mess. In fact, Nemesis was created by Umbrella as a countermeasure to eradicate all members of S.T.A.R.S that might blow the whistle on their involvement with the zombie pandemic, hence why all Nemesis can gravelly utter is the name of the organization. But Nemesis isn’t the only Umbrella associate out on the prowl tonight in Raccoon City. Jill will meet three members of an armed Umbrella task force assigned to dispose of anything infected by the T-Virus and rescue any remaining civilians. Jill is right to be untrusting of anyone who bears the symbol of her mortal enemy, but she must work alongside these guys due to running low on options for lucid human interactions to aid in her escape mission. It turns out that only one of the three men is an unscrupulous bastard, and that’s their leader Nikolai. This Soviet army veteran treats the whole T-virus epidemic as a front for business, willing to exterminate all that keep him from financially benefiting from it including some of his own men. Shoot this guy down with a bazooka when given the opportunity. Speaking of which, the other two Umbrella mercenaries are so disgusted at Nikolai’s callousness that they defect to aiding Jill instead. Carlos, one of the men who becomes the game’s secondary protagonist, takes a temporary role as a playable character in a hospital section where he retrieves a vaccine for an infected Jill. We see less of the other noble mercenary, Mikhail, on account of his grievous wounds, but sacrificing himself to save Jill on the cable car is certainly a noteworthy action of decency, right? Besides Wesker, these three men give the Umbrella corporation a face to attach with, and the reference we obtain from the mixed bag of interactions and intentions between them illustrates a complex moral quandary for what was previously an enigmatically evil force in the franchise. Perhaps the same complications of duty versus dogma can parallel real-life factions with bad reputations.

If I’ve played any third game of any franchise beforehand, and I certainly have, then my experience with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis should come as no surprise. The unification of Resident Evil’s tropes and mechanics seen in RE2 made it a tough act to follow, which can be said for most sophomore sequels for a number of franchises. Still, quelling the sensation of yearning from fans after they’ve played the peak of the series by rounding it out with a third game is always a requisite, even if these last hurrahs tend to overflow the foundation with additional attributes. Most of the additional attributes that RE3 wove into the fabric of the franchise are flawed at best and infuriating at worst, and I wish I could avoid the bad ones as deliberately as the unyielding monster at the center of the game. The best aspects of RE3 that make it a worthy entry are improving on the elements already in the franchise that Resident Evil 2 lacked, such as challenging puzzles in eerie environments instead of all the window dressing they figured would make a substantial difference. With a few noteworthy gripes withstanding, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is still an effective note to end the franchise’s reign as the champion of survival horror on the original PlayStation.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Conker’s Bad Fur Day was the perfect swansong for the N64. What better game to send off the console other than with a crass, anarchic romp that wiped its ass with the family-friendly foundation that Nintendo facilitated and by the third-party developer that arguably made the greatest contribution in cementing its accessibility? Unsuspecting consumers assumed that Conker’s Bad Fur Day was yet another innocuous 3D platformer due to its Rareware pedigree and the fact that the game featured a furry, anthropomorphic protagonist. However, they were all flabbergasted at the game’s true colors underneath its intentionally squeaky-clean surface, even though the game box art featured an M-rating along with a disclaimer explicitly stating that this was not a game for children. All the while, Conker is holding a frothy mug of beer with his disturbingly voluptuous girlfriend, Berry. Even if someone is experiencing Conker’s Bad Fur Day knowing full well that the game is intended for mature audiences, the content is still pretty shocking. Rare created a game that shifted the light-hearted tone of their smash hits Banjo Kazooie and Tooie on its head without altering the cherubic visuals, inflicting obscenities on its storybook fantasy world and the cuddly characters that reside in it. Conker’s Bad Fur Day snuck in viscera and vulgarity into the pristine 3D platformer genre like a trojan horse, and uneducated parents were mortified when they inadvertently exposed their children to it. Grand Theft Auto III, another game released in 2001 that also garnered levels of contempt from the PTA boards around the world, at least made it obvious that children shouldn’t play it. On the other hand, Conker’s Bad Fur Day villainously duped parents with a level of deception that shattered their trust in the gaming industry, even though Nintendo did its best to warn them. All controversies aside, the provocative premise of Conker’s Bad Fur Day made it a breath of fresh air. The N64 was overflowing with many bright, cutesy 3D platformers thanks to Super Mario 64. The adult content of Conker’s Bad Fur Day acted as a self-effacing parody to signify that the genre had stagnated and needed to be buried alongside the console that harbored them. If Conker eviscerating the N64 logo with a chainsaw in the game’s introduction isn’t emblematic of its ethos, I don’t know how they could’ve conveyed it more overtly (okay, maybe Banjo’s severed head hung up on a plaque over the bar in the main menu). No one will argue against Conker’s legacy as a subversive title, but whether or not the game is up to snuff with its fellow 3D platformers mechanically is a point of contention.

Rare didn’t just whip Conker out of their ass when they sat down to devise the components of Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Squirrels are certainly an appropriately adorable animal, but it’s questionable where they fit on the hierarchy of cuteness next to cats, dogs, or even other woodland critters. Conker was once a budding IP Rare introduced by making Conker a playable character in the 1997 N64 title Diddy Kong Racing. The Conker IP debuted on the Gameboy Color with Conker’s Pocket Tales, a simplistic action-adventure game marketed towards a very young demographic, as one would expect from a game featuring a cartoon squirrel. Rare was initially developing a fully-fledged console follow-up on the N64 titled Twelve Tails: Conker 64, but the early reception was less-than-enthusiastic. Developers were worried that kiddy Conker would wilt under the overcasting shadow of Banjo-Kazooie, for the game mirrored the inoffensive, mirthful atmosphere of the Banjo games to the point where it seemed derivative. In order to give Conker an identity of his own, Rare pulled what Hannah-Barbera did with obscure 1960s cartoon superhero Space Ghost and reinvigorated him into the realm of maturity, albeit with crude humor as opposed to dry, off-kilter absurdism. Immediately, Conker’s Bad Fur Day illustrates the squirrel’s transformation in the opening cutscene when he leaves his girlfriend Berri a message from a bar payphone to tell her he’s coming home late so he can buy another round with the boys. He gets sloppy drunk, ralphs on the ground, and loses himself in a drunken stupor. Whether it's a matter of lying to his girlfriend or binge drinking, Conker is clearly an adult putting himself in adult situations.

Ironically, Conker’s Bad Fur Day excels the most in the least edgy aspect found in the game, and that’s its surface-level presentation. The most fortunate thing about being the last hurrah in a console’s lifespan is having the advantage of hindsight paved by the shortcomings of your predecessors who were busy finding their way through uncharted territory. In the annals of gaming history, there hasn’t been a more arduous terrain to trek through than buffing out the cracks of 3D graphics in the N64 generation. Conker’s Bad Fur Day couldn’t transcend the rudimentary snags that beset the N64, or at least to the point where the player could clearly discern every strand of fur on Conker’s body. After five years of developing early 3D games on a console that looked like blocks of airbrushed chunks of cheese, Rare flaunted their experience in developing for the N64 and made a game that proved to be the pinnacle of the system’s capabilities. Conker’s Bad Fur Day is, bar none, the most gorgeous N64 game from a graphical standpoint, something unexpected from a title that brandishes such vulgar content. The graphics here don’t look too unfamiliar to the typical N64 aesthetic, but Conker’s Bad Fur Day pushes itself beyond its contemporaries through an elevated scope. I’ve always claimed that early 3D games that adopted a more fantastical, cartoonish style looked the most appealing. The developers could render something fittingly unrealistic under the confines of early 3D instead of attempting to emulate actual humans and real-world environments to expectedly lackluster results with such games as Goldeneye. Conker’s Bad Fur Day could essentially function as an interactive cartoon like all of its fellow 3D platformers, but the secret ingredient lies in taking the wide scope of some of Banjo’s levels and using that design consistently. The area of Conker’s Bad Fur Day that acts as the nucleus of the game’s world is a hub whose grassy valleys and hilly peaks create a diverse range of elevation, making Conker look small and insignificant. Interior areas such as the gothic castle and the prehistoric chamber are magnificently spacious, and the inner sanctum of the dung beetle’s operation is like a poopy Paradise Lost. Even the cliffside waterfall in the tutorial section looks splendorous. The best levels from the Banjo games were those with a wide proportional setting and expansive parameters. Conker’s Bad Fur Day makes something relatively cohesive with the same design philosophy. With a few refinements to the shape and tints of character models and settings, Conker’s Bad Fur Day makes it apparent how far the N64 has come since Mario was hopping on a series of colored blocks in the N64’s infancy.

Another contributing factor to Conker’s stellar presentation is its cinematic flair. The game doesn’t present itself as if Hideo Kojima is at the helm, but like with its graphics, Conker’s Bad Fur Day makes due with what the N64 obliges and delivers spectacularly. A substantial portion of Conker’s Bad Fur Day’s humor is delivered through dialogue during cutscenes interspersed between gameplay moments. On the screen, dialogue is presented through speech bubbles, a fittingly comic touch that accentuates the game’s cartoon visuals. Bubbles with text that pop up on the screen never overflow and become jarring because the text refreshes with every spoken line, and conversing characters are never shown on the screen simultaneously. As you can probably guess, a strong facet of the game’s vulgarities is the foul language that spews from the mouths of the characters. Funny enough, Conker’s dialogue is saintly compared to every single NPC character's colorful stream of verbal sewage. Maybe this was done to make Conker seem more like a stranger in a strange land, a hostile environment marked by inhospitable rudeness. Either way, the language in Conker’s Bad Fur Day is caustic enough to make an aging schoolmarm say seven hail marys. Another surprising choice from the developers regarding the dialogue was to censor the word “fuck.” Don’t worry: the mother of all swear words is used frequently by the characters in a myriad of varieties, but any utterance of the word is bleeped like it’s on TV with a series of violent characters obscuring the word in the speech bubble. Somehow, keeping the overall language PG-13 by censoring “fuck” makes the game sound more explicit, with the grating sound of the bleep ringing louder in the player's ears than if they kept the dialogue as is. I’m surprised none of the NPCs ever told Conker to see you next Tuesday if you catch my vernacular. Rare is a British company, after all. Speaking of which, a mere three voice actors deliver the profane lines, and they all struggle to mask their British accents. Some voices, like Conker, occasionally seep in a British inflection on what seems like an accident, while others, like the dung beetles, sound like the Gallagher brothers from Oasis. Whether or not the voice actors are making an attempt to veil their accent, the cadence of the line deliveries consistently sounds like the voice is an improvised impression that is slowly deflating. Do not expect vocal performances with range or emotion; I’ll give the developers the benefit of the doubt that perhaps it’s another mark of the game’s wacky eccentricities rather than bad direction.

Also, do not expect Conker’s Bad Fur Day to amaze the player with an extravagant plot. Conker’s mission throughout the game is just to find his way home, like a scatological Homer’s Odyssey. Conker’s journey is a roundabout trek through a no man’s land where each step onward won’t lead him closer to his goal but provide another distraction with its own secondary arc. Any characters Conker comes across have a perfunctory presence whose transient impact on the story leaves no lasting impression. Sections of the game’s story are listed in chapters, divided by notable scenes like how the aforementioned Greek epic is structured. Similar to how everyone remembers individual parts of The Odyssey, such as the bout with the Cyclops or avoiding the Sirens, the player will similarly recognize the events of Conker’s Bad Fur Day. The pinnacle moment of each chapter is obtaining dollars: hopping, cigar-smoking stacks of money that serve as the game’s one collectible. Adult Conker is a man’s man who is motivated by money, alcohol, and poontang, so of course, all three of these things are featured in his mature breakout title in some capacity. The cutscene that triggers when the player collects these wads of cash shows Conker’s pupils shifting into dollar signs as they scroll up in his head like slot machines, with Conker expressing an ecstatically wide, toothy grin. If you’ve played any other 3D platformer game, you’ll know this is a nod to the brief, victorious celebration that a character performs when they earn another one of the main collectibles (Super Mario 64, Banjo, Jak and Daxter) and Conker’s expression never fails to amuse me. I’ve heard that collecting the money unlocks new areas and progresses the game, but I found this inconsistent. Judging from the placement of these chapters in the main menu, I completed the section with the barn way before the game was intended, and the game did not direct somewhere else on the map.

I’d claim that Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a deconstruction of the archetypal hero’s journey, like the cash collectible is for gaming tropes, but I feel I’d be giving the game too much credit considering the half-assed conflict scenario they conjured up. Meanwhile, the Panther King, the mighty monarch of this land, notices a problem while sitting on his imposing throne. The table on which his glass of milk resides is missing a leg, and he cannot hold it due to its irregularity. His scientist advisor deduces that placing a red squirrel as an alternative for the missing leg is the only logical solution, for a red squirrel is the optimal size and color. The Panther King’s weasel army sets out to capture Conker so their snarling highness can drink his milk in peace. Is this really the best source of conflict you could come up with, Rare?

Perhaps I can’t be too critical of the game’s arching plot because it seems evident that Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a series of events that serve as a collective. Because the nature of this kind of story is episodic, a good ol’ highlight reel is needed to detail Conker’s finest moments. Calling Conker’s Bad Fur Day crude is a statement that even Captain Obvious wouldn’t bother to utter. Each chapter in the game involves a fresh slew of characters and scenarios, so the game has plenty of opportunities to be uniquely offensive. For those of you who are particularly squeamish, chapters like “Windy” and “Barn Boys” feature the visceral combustion of precious farm animals. Conker feeds an irritating rat so much cheese that the gas built up by lactose causes him to inflate and explode like a watermelon, while the cows are disposed of by the ramming of an irate bull after they defecate enough for the dung beetle’s liking. Several local villagers are abducted by Bat Conker in “Spooky” and are liquidated by a spiky, medieval contraption in a room of the Count’s mansion as a means for the ancient vampire to feast on their gushy remains. Conker sacrifices an infant dinosaur he hatches to gain further access to the “Uga Buga” level, where a giant stone slab crushes the adorable beast into bloody mincemeat. To be fair, the creature had blood on his hands as he devoured every caveman in sight until he was pulverized. If blood and guts don’t turn your stomach, Conker’s Bad Fur Day also offers up a slew of raunchy moments involving intimate bodily fluids and lewd, sexual content. One of Conker’s adult vices that I briefly touched upon was alcohol, and the stupid bastard didn’t learn his lesson from the night before. In two sections, guzzling booze from a keg will get Conker sloppy drunk, and the objective is to unzip his pants and douse enemies with his piss. Do I need to comment on the content involving fecal matter any further? Actually, the shit in Conker’s Bad Fur Day stacks up so high that it hits the fan with The Great Mighty Poo, a magnificent mass of sentient poo so grand that it developed a singing voice to match its immense size. This boss fight that also factors as a musical number is one of the greatest boss fights in gaming history, and I will not dispute this claim with anyone. There is no explicit nudity in Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but the game still teeters with the western world’s most touchy taboos. The Boiler Room boss inside the vault brandishes a pair of iron testicles that Conker must wallop with a set of bricks. The fight against Buga the Knut, the king of the cavemen, involves making his pants fall down like King Hippo, only this neanderthal isn’t wearing underwear, and Conker must make the miniature T-Rex he hypnotized chomp off chunks of flesh from his big, naked ass. After that, Conker takes a crack at his tall, buxom cavewoman, for the well-endowed sunflower he encountered earlier weirded him out (as it did for the rest of us). Look at Berri and tell me with a straight face that she’s a dynamic character and not a trope of sexual objectification (you can’t). People nowadays might take offense at a Beavis, and Butthead duo of a paint can and brush bullying a pitchfork into hanging himself, which he fails because he doesn’t have a neck.

The million-dollar question on the content of Conker is if it is still funny after all these years or if it was funny, to begin with. During the late 90s and early 2000s, comedy’s initiative in raising the bar included the foulest and most deplorable things that media in the past wouldn’t dare to display. One could probably compare Conker’s Bad Fur Day to South Park, for they both broke ground in the vein of depravity for their respective mediums around the same time. However, Conker’s Bad Fur Day doesn’t mold its crude humor into a satirical substance like South Park tends to do. All we can do with Conker’s content is marvel at how these perversities managed to elude the censors for shock value. On top of the shlock, the meta humor, film references, and other humor tropes common at the time make me groan. The A Clockwork Orange Kubrick stare and the D-Day recreation from Saving Private Ryan are effective, but I’ve seen these parodied countless times. Am I not seeing the comedic genius because I am experiencing this game twenty years after it was released? The most amusing aspect of Conker’s Bad Fur Day is how much it borrows from Looney Tunes as its prime source of cartoon inspiration. Conker is essentially a more sociopathic Bugs Bunny, treating all the people around him with sarcastic glee and derision. Just substitute a beer for a carrot, and the word “maroon” for “wanker” and the resemblance is uncanny.

I can forgive the dated humor in Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but I cannot overlook the game's severe mechanical problems. One would expect an adult-oriented 3D platformer to offer more of a challenge, but I feel Conker provides one unintentionally. Overall, the game is fairly lenient, with difficulty in terms of approaching obstacles and with error. In another attempt to jab at video game tropes, actions in the game are reserved for “context-sensitive pads” seen everywhere with the letter B. A lightbulb will appear over Conker’s head, and he’ll proceed to whip anything out of his ass to solve a problem. Usually, these instances are pretty straightforward. The video game trope of multiple lives is explained by a diminutive, churlish depiction of the Grim Reaper once the player dies for the first time. Apparently, a squirrel is an animal with multiple lives like those blasted cats he despises, and extra lives are tails hanging off of random places around the map. To stave off bothering Grim, tabs of chocolate are displayed as the game’s health item, totaling up to a maximum of six. Chocolate is everywhere, and thank the lord because Conker constantly depletes it due to falling. Even the most tepid of tumbles will hurt Conker, which isn’t fair, considering he’s a character with the power of flight. The player can execute a high jump and glide for a short distance, hurting Conker. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourselves. The chapter of “Bat’s Tower” was especially tense because of this. On top of this, aiming Conker’s flight trajectory is a finicky task due to Conker’s base control feeling like years of drinking have made him half-paralyzed. Add a restricted, uncooperative camera in the mix, and the game reminds me less of Banjo Kazooie and more of Super Mario 64. Ouch.

Controlling Conker already sounds bad enough on a base level, but it’s made much worse anytime the game features anything outside the realm of platforming. Unfortunately, this happens a lot. Notorious examples include swimming underwater in the vault and the blistering lava race, but these end quickly as opposed to the game’s shoddy shooting controls. Getting rid of the hostile dung beetles at the beginning with a slingshot is an early sampler of these, and it’s uneventful due to the sluggish speed of the bugs. The hive turret is sort of uncooperative, but the one-shot damage of the bullets does enough to compensate. The pinpoint accuracy needed to kill the zombies in “Spooky” is excruciating, but it’s only a small factor of the entire chapter. The lengthy period of the game that makes shooting a core mechanic is the WWII-inspired “It’s War.” War is hell enough, but having to mow down gangs upon gangs of evil Tediz as a one-man army feels like we’ve plunged into the seventh circle. The shooting controls in Conker’s Bad Fur Day are some of the most slippery and unresponsive I’ve seen across any game I’ve played. The Tediz do not have to adhere to piss-poor controls, so they’ll easily bushwack Conker while he’s lining his sights. This especially becomes a problem during the chapter’s escape sequence on the beach, where the Tediz can obliterate Conker with one bazooka shell, whereas Conker has to stop and carefully aim. This chapter made me feel like I just underwent a campaign overseas and started feeling the stages of shell shock. Conker can't be a renaissance man if he already struggles with his main mechanic.

I’ve given up on making sense of Conker’s plot, but the ending of the game bothered me. Once Conker returns from war, the weasel mob boss wants him and Berri to complete a bank heist, and this operation is a full-on Matrix reference, complete with all of the action sequences we’ve seen parodied to death. At the end of the vault is the Panther King, who has become impatient waiting for Conker and decides to face Conker himself. Unexpectedly, his contemptuous scientific underling has slipped his boss a mickey in the form of yet another film reference: the xenomorph from Alien who bursts from his chest. Not an alien with a striking resemblance to H.R. Giger’s creation, but the alien itself. How did Rare not get sued? Conker even duels the alien as the game’s final boss in the yellow mech and says, “get away from her, you bitch!” when it hovers over Berri’s lifeless body. The fight proves too formidable for Conker, but before he is torn to shreds, the game freezes as Conker uses this opportunity to request more accommodating circumstances for this scenario. He decapitates the xenomorph with a katana and succeeds the Panther King as the land’s royal leader. A postmodern meta moment like this is not surprising, but placing it in the game’s climax feels rather contrived. Then again, the game’s plot was already contrived. One thing I like about the ending is swinging the xenomorph by its tail in an homage to the Bowser fights in Super Mario 64. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the most clever reference in the game.

It goes without saying, but Conker’s Bad Fur Day certainly stands out from the rest of its 3D platformer contemporaries. The game perches itself on the tower of backs made from its N64 brethren to poke and prod their foundations while excreting an unspeakable cocktail of piss and shit down their trail. Games like Super Mario 64 and Rare’s Banjo games walked so Conker’s Bad Fur Day could run, and the game has shown through its presentation that it can run pretty fast. Unfortunately, the game did not have the stamina or gaming competency to do the hundred-yard dash, making it a fellow contender instead of the undisputed king. Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a case of style over substance, and even then, the smutty style that launched it into the stratosphere is a bit too sophomoric and is ultimately a product of its time. Nevertheless, Conker’s Bad Fur Day is still a unique experience not for the faint of heart, and rest assured that there won’t be another game like it released in the future.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Thank fucking God that there wasn’t a Metroid game on the N64. It might sound cruel and imperceptive to belittle the chronic anguish that Metroid fans felt during the franchise's eight-year hiatus after Super Metroid was released, for I don’t have a firsthand account of this period because I was born during the span of time. For those of you older than I who waited with a growing, uncomfortable anticipation just to be stood up by Nintendo, I sympathize with your grief. I must’ve felt like hell knowing that the ecstatic kid from that viral N64 video booted up Super Smash Bros. that Christmas Day and readily recognized every character in the starting roster from their individual N64 titles except for our beloved space-age heroine, and you couldn’t fault his ignorance. Despite the Metroid franchise taking a lap generation during such a crucial time in gaming history, I still defend my position that the near decade of inactivity proved to be for its benefit. Metroid’s gameplay is more difficult to translate to a 3D environment compared to Nintendo’s other properties. Castlevania defined Metroid’s idiosyncrasies with Symphony of the Night, giving credence to Metroid’s core design philosophy which is staunchly two-dimensional. Many transitions to 3D from franchises born in the pixelated era had to sacrifice a certain amount of detail in the environments in order to render the 3D competently. Compare the varied terrain and elaborate setpieces in A Link to the Past’s Hyrule Field to the echoey vacant one in Ocarina of Time. While subtracting the number of attributes in the foreground can still fundamentally work in Zelda, doing the same for Metroid would exponentially compromise its rich, intricate design to the point of total obliviation. If I had to guess, a 3D Metroid would be similar to the two 3D Castlevania games on the N64: 3D renderings that completely botched its 2D source material with awkward combat and a camera so wonky that it makes Super Mario 64’s Lakitu look like he has the cinematography prowess of an esteemed Hollywood director. To be fair, translating the Metroidvania genre in 3D is a tough task even in this day and age, with only a select few 3D games borrowing only a few assets without emulating the 2D genre to its full extent. Nintendo knew that Metroid was going to need a longer bout of consideration before they planted Samus in a 3D environment, and the eventual revelation came to fruition one generation later with the glorious Metroid Prime on the Gamecube.

Of course, we all know that Nintendo’s four-ported lunchbox was where all the 3D dreams went to die, or at least it was for all of those who were formally introduced to the dimension in the N64 era. After half a decade of buffing out the cracks of the three-dimensional realm, Nintendo decided to innovate even further in the second 3D generation with radical ideas that upset those who were used to the loyal 3D reimaginings of Nintendo’s staple series seen on the N64. Metroid’s major offense on the Gamecube was immediately absolved upon its release unlike the cases of The Wind Waker’s graphics or Super Mario Sunshine’s setting, but it did make many fans weary when it was announced. Nintendo’s heavily premeditated plan to efficiently translate Metroid into a 3D game was to develop it as a first-person shooter, something completely unorthodox that caught everyone off guard. Not only that but the game would be outsourced to an American developer called Retro Studios as their debut project. Considering the circumstances, the fans all figured that Nintendo should’ve released a shovel with Metroid Prime to bury Samus’s corpse alongside every fan’s collective hopes and wishes for their idealized first 3D Metroid experience. Such a grand responsibility in the hands of amateurs with an untested mechanic at the helm spelled emanate disaster for the Metroid franchise. Even though things looked bleak and uncertain, the finished product assuaged the skeptical fears of the masses. The modest group at Retro Studios executed Nintendo’s baffling ambitions for Metroid’s 3D debut extraordinarily without compromising on the traditional Metroid experience.

As I said before, my earliest gaming memories can only recall the successful impact that Metroid Prime had after it was released, and the recollections during the period of despair I only know from popular sentiments that have been chronicled for reference. As someone who wasn’t busy hyperventilating at the thought of Nintendo dooming the Metroid franchise at the time, I can express that Nintendo shipping the responsibility of developing Metroid Prime off to an American studio was always a brilliant idea. Think about it: every single notable first-person shooter before Metroid Prime’s creation (and to this very day) was developed and produced in the western world. For some reason, the immensely popular genre never made an impact on the industry titan that is Japan, making the first-person shooter as American as apple pie (with some examples from Europe as well). Truthfully, any renowned Japanese studio would’ve been as inexperienced in developing for the first-person shooter genre as Retro Studios was, so why not assign the duty to a group of Americans in which their second-amendment rights allow lead and gunpowder to flow through their bloodstreams? Perhaps people assumed that an American studio would bastardize Metroid by formulating the series as a crude, hyper-violent bloodbath where Samus wears nothing but a skimpy bikini, which I’m not sure is an unfair indictment of the FPS genre or American media as a whole. Fortunately, the game showcases the utmost respect the developers had for the source material and how they masterfully coalesced a 2D character into a 3D environment with FPS mechanics.

While Samus infiltrates the Space Pirate-operated Frigate Orpheon orbiting over the planet of Tallon IV, a series of force fields impede Samus from progressing any further past the outer gates of the facility. Four red buttons located on each corner of the force field’s boundaries imply that interacting with them will most likely manipulate the activeness of the shield, so shooting them with Samus’s distinctive blaster will switch them off. The ones at face level can be shot with a simple tap of the A button, while the two situated above Samus require more consideration from the player. By holding down the R trigger, the player can aim the blaster manually in a myriad of directions, and they’ll use this often to clear out overhead enemies that Samus will encounter throughout the game. However, it’s more likely that the player will embrace the option given to them on the opposing L trigger, which locks onto enemies and objects to ensure more accurate aiming. Holding down the L trigger will automatically lock onto anything significant in Samus’s peripheral range, which varies from enemies, objects, switches, and other points of interest. Deeper into the Frigate, the lock-on system is tested in combat with the defense turrets, a common enemy type in Metroid Prime whose stationary status makes for ideal practice fodder early on. The Parasite Queen, the game’s first boss, is the pinnacle of Metroid Prime’s test run with the combat as the player will shoot at the slimy beast through an exposed crevice as it’s suspended upward in its cylindrical chamber. Like Ocarina of Time before it, the lock-on mechanic is a helpful aid to ease the player into the transition between the familiar 2D combat and the radical shift of 3D.

For more robust enemies with legs and wings, the player will gain more perspective on Metroid Prime’s combat as soon as the surviving Space Pirates rear their ugly heads out of the shady corners of the station. Combat in Metroid Prime is ultimately more defense-oriented as the enemies are quick on their feet, and their rapid-fire projectiles will penetrate through Samus’s armor quickly until her energy tanks deplete and she screams in bloody terror upon dying, with her visor flashing off like an old television. Using the lock-on feature ensures that each shot from Samus’s blaster has an almost certain likelihood of hitting the enemies, so the player’s objective during combat is to dodge their array of firepower with the dash move. While locked on, the player can strafe from left to right with the swiftness of an intergalactic ninja, evading the barrage of energy bullets. Samus is more agile than the average FPS protagonist, compensating for the fact that the environment of a Metroid game doesn’t have as many foreground pieces to duck and cover behind. More so, Samus’s shrewd mobility can be attributed to the developers loyally translating Samus’s platforming origins in the FPS genre, as platformer characters tend to be more sprightly than the more action-oriented FPS protagonists, who usually only need to occasionally scale a more structured staircase while blowing away their enemies with shotgun blasts. Platforms are situated all around Tallon IV, with most of them fitting appropriately as an area’s rational architecture while others levitate over the ground with much less of a solid constructional bearing. Even when a certain section is littered with these types of platforms for convenient ascension, they never overstay their welcome and ruin the consistent overlay of the area. Overall, I’m glad that Tallon IV offers plenty of structures for Samus to jump onto because it’s a humbling reminder of the Metroid franchise's roots as a platformer. That shan’t be forgotten when translating Metroid’s gameplay despite the FPS frontier, and both elements complement each other superbly. The unlikely marriage of both here makes for something nuanced, efficiently streamlined, and as smooth as Samus’s legs right before she docks herself in her bulky space suit for the lengthy duration of a mission.

The FPS format does not forsake Samus’s gravity-defying jumping ability, but what about other aspects pertaining to Metroid’s identity? One of the core elements of Metroid often credited to its effectiveness is the franchise's atmosphere, the feeling of total isolation in a hostile habitat weighing down on the player to the point of palpable dread. As blazing fast as the pacing of many FPS games tends to be, the genre is not alien to titles with a more methodical direction that fosters something similar to Metroid’s oppressive ambiance. Half-Life and System Shock, the noteworthy FPS exceptions, probably owe their cold, pensive auras to the classic Metroids, and Metroid Prime dips back into this sphere of influence by borrowing the FPS mechanics of those games. It’s a wonder why the FPS genre isn’t characterized by deep immersion more often because the unique perspective it offers is incredibly intimate. Since its inception, gaming has made great strides in increasing its immersive elements, with several outlets such as character customizability and naming the protagonist as a few examples. Samus is already an established character with a canon name and backstory, so Metroid Prime cannot reduce her to a retrograde, faceless avatar to enhance the player’s immersion in this regard. The FPS vantage point rather allows us to better understand Samus’s surroundings by seeing them directly through the consciousness of the space-age bounty hunter.

As one would figure, Samus is a human being whose lungs cannot subsist off the oxygen-deprived extraterrestrial ecosystems she excavates, so her trusty space helmet provides both the protection and sustenance she needs. Thanks to the first-person view, we now see the game through Samus’s visor along with its various components. In each corner of the computerized interior details notable features such as Samus’s total health and number of energy tanks, the alternate visors in the bottom left corner, the various beams in the bottom right corner, the number of missiles at her disposal, a radar that signals if there are enemies in the vicinity, a danger meter, and a rudimentary outline of the location. Using Samus’s visor as an onscreen menu is a clever transitional aspect to the FPS genre that seems all too natural. In addition to the detail in the interior visor, the developers went the extra mile to showcase how external factors affect Samus’s visor as well. After the Frigate Orpheon in the introduction is demolished and crashes on the nearby planet of Tallon IV like a crude meteorite, Samus decides to follow suit, albeit with a more dignified entrance using her ship. She parks her vessel on a wetland area colloquially known as the “overworld” that shares the planet’s namesake. The constant rainfall endemic to this watery quagmire naturally cascades onto Samus, as not even the acuteness of the strafe move is swift enough to dodge the rain. The area’s ceaseless precipitation plinks and plops onto Samus’s visor like a car windshield and immerses the player in the scope of the environment. In Magmoor Caverns, burning steam jets out of the molten crust of the area, achieving the same effect as the Overworld’s rain even if its orange texture is reminiscent of Cheeto dust. Gunk spewed out from certain enemies will splatter on the visor, and the biting frost of Phendrana Drifts will obscure Samus’s vision like she’s been ensnared in a block of solid ice. The most impressive visual detail relating to the visor is that whenever the player shoots a burst of energy from Samus’s blaster at a wall, the reflecting light of the shot shows a flash of Samus’s baby-blue eyes from inside of the visor. The developers do their best to envelope the player as Samus and achieve this sensation with meticulous attention to detail.

Traditionally, the intended atmosphere conveyed in a Metroid game is exuded through the areas, either on their individual merits or as a collective. The feeling of discomforting dread is achieved through the game’s progression in that as the player digs deeper into the crevices of uncharted territory, curiosity will proverbially start to kill the cat that is Samus. Or, at least it will gradually dawn on her that her surroundings have become overwhelmingly perilous the further she strays away from her parked ship. In Super Metroid, scrolling down the two-dimensional map of Zebes from the zenith point of the ship almost simulates a literal descent into a harrowing rabbit hole with tinier swathes of respite as Samus continues to burrow. Progress in Metroid Prime couldn’t have been emulated the same way, as tunneling downward consistently in a 3D space would’ve oversimplified the area’s designs. Yet, Metroid Prime attempts to recreate something similar to Super Metroid’s sense of progression all the same, almost to an uncanny extent. Several parallels can be made between Crateria and the Tallon IV Overworld, as they’re both rainy groves marked as “safe zones'' due to their naturalistic environment and calming rate of enemy activity. The main difference is that the Overworld here is expanded to the scale of a fully-fledged area such as Brinstar or Maridia as opposed to the foyer with several branching staircases that was Crateria. Comparisons to Super Metroid’s levels are even clearer when Samus can access the flooded remains of the Frigate Orpheon, located conveniently along the path of the Overworld like the Wrecked Ship was in Crateria. I’m convinced that Magmoor Caverns exists to fill the lava pool level requisite in lieu of Norfair’s absence. Metroid Prime unintentionally flirts with 3D reboot territory by repeating a number of classic level tropes and broadening them to an admirable degree, but it might, unfortunately, indicate that Metroid might be a one-trick pony in how its areas are structured. However, the developers proved this to not be the case by integrating new areas with the traditional ones to still progress the game in a familiar manner.

Chozo Ruins is a sensible next step to the base of the Overworld because the increase in hostility is minuscule. Similarly to the Overworld, the Chozo Ruins are relatively sparse in enemy presence, but I wouldn’t describe the area as tranquil like the Overworld. The aura of stillness in the Chozo Ruins stems from the arid dearth of life in the sandy remnants of the once proud Chozo people. Overgrown, brambly vegetation covers the sublime architecture as scavengers roam the dunes looking for what little nourishment there still is. Chozo Ruins is the graveyard of a formally prosperous civilization and while the eeriness of the site might instill a sense of consternation, the dangers involved are appropriately tepid. Magmoor Caverns and Phendrana Drifts, the two following areas, showcase a particular relationship with each other relating to their elemental themes. As I expressed before, Magmoor Caverns is Tallon IV’s Norfair, only more linear and with a more literal sense of claustrophobia with its cramped corridors. The nearest elevator from the Chozo Ruins exit will take Samus to Phendrana, and the snow-covered winter wonderland seems like a stark contrast to the hellish cesspit of Magmoor where one misstep in the gushing flow of lava could fry Samus in seconds. At first glance, Phendrana seems as blissful as the Overworld, but the 3D space allows an area to district more distinct tropes into an area than seen in Super Metroid. The escalating sense of danger in Metroid Prime seems to be intertwined with the presence of the Space Pirates. Eventually, scrounging around Phendrana will lead Samus to the frigid laboratory where Metroids are housed for experimentation. The awe-inspiring atmosphere from outside drops like a rock as Samus plunges into a chilling facility swarming with Space Pirates. One could argue that the dread of this particular sector of Phendrana might stem from the pitch-black darkness of the second half, but I’d have to disagree using the last area of the game as evidence.

The Phazon Mines are the last area of Tallon IV that Samus encounters, and it’s the point of the game where the consistent difficulty curve rockets off to the moon. The challenge imbalance might be why this area feels so unnerving and if this is so, it’s because the Mines are the base of the Space Pirate’s operation and Samus has found herself in the heart of the hive. Every breed of Space Pirate is here to bushwhack Samus at every waking step, and the infamous trek from the crane site to the Power Bomb room is the epitome of an endurance test. Besides the rich Phazon material radiating in this area’s crust, the Mines are nothing but a barren crater. It’s unsettling how there is no organic life here, only the prevalent corruption of the Space Pirates. The Phazon Mines serve as the pinnacle of Samus’s journey to despair with the same creepy subtitles seen in Super Metroid.

Perhaps the most challenging task in orchestrating the intended progression is rendering the Metroidvania elements in this 3D environment. It’s hard to believe that there aren’t more translations of the traditional 2D Metroidvania tropes in more 3D games because Retro Studios makes the process look effortless. As layered and multifaceted as a Metroidvania’s design might seem, the specific crux of Metroid that cultivates the distinctive progression is simple: Samus gradually regains her misplaced powers. The introduction sequence teases the player with a select few of these powers before stripping them away when Samus is blown back by an explosion. Because the game gives the player a sample taste of Samus’s full capacity, retrieving the upgrades also serves as a great incentive to play through the game. Starting out on the field of Tallon IV, Samus’s arsenal is limited to her standard blaster and piddly single jump, so she is heavily restricted to a very finite range of ground. As par for the Metroidvania course, the few paths Samus can explore are illustrated clearly by the game, so the player shouldn’t find themselves hopelessly lost and confused. They can even use the 3D polygonal map of each area as a helpful reference. One complaint I often see regarding Metroid Prime’s treatment of the Metroidvania progression is that the game makes the objective too obvious by pinpointing it on the map. During the exploration process, a signal will beam onto Samus’s visor with a brief description of the objective and marking the area of interest with a question mark. While doing this might hold the player’s hand to some extent, I’ll excuse it because it ultimately doesn’t force the player to drop their freedom to explore and follow that particular path.

Once the player traverses through the mapped trajectory the game lays out for them, several returning items are translated to Metroid Prime for Samus’s further use in the new 3D environment. Missiles are now designated to their own button on the Gamecube’s controller and still serve as the best complimentary weapon to Samus’s blaster. The implementation of the other familiar power-ups seen in Metroid Prime are quite surprising in that the developers managed to implement them considering that they could’ve compromised on the FPS foundation. Samus’s inhuman flexibility returns with the Morph Ball and when Samus scrunches down to her supernatural fetal position, it’s the only instance where the player sees the game in third-person. Given that a first-person view of Samus rolling around would’ve made everyone bilious, the shift in perspective is reasonable and it manages to work harmoniously in contrast to the normal first-person viewpoint due to the limited array of Morph Ball functions. Morph Ball bombs and Power Bombs are still laid like chicken eggs to blow open cracked crevices, and the Grapple Beam is made possible via the trusty lock-on feature. Sadly, series staples like the Screwattack and the skill-based wall jump had to be scrapped, most likely because their utilization crossed the line of practicality that the others didn’t. Fortunately, the developers realized that Metroid’s 3D space allowed for newfound ingenuity with Samus’s abilities. Regarding the Morph Ball, it seems to be the upgrade most tinkered with for new methods of traversal. Jumping in Morph Ball mode with the spring is no longer an option, but the Morph Ball can boost with built-up inertia, which is mainly used in skill-intensive half-pipe sections to ascend Samus to heights incapable to reach even with the second rocket boot jump. The Spider Ball upgrade magnetizes Samus to a striped rail grid when she’s in the Morph Ball, which carries Samus along its track. Whether using these new upgrades in traversing the map or for retrieving health and missile expansions in obscure crevices, their implementations make for the most circuitous and engaging platform/puzzle sequences.

In previous Metroid titles, every subsequent beam upgrade Samus finds is intended to make the previous one obsolete. In Metroid Prime, the developers decided to incorporate every beam upgrade into a comprehensive arsenal of elements that Samus can alternate with the C-stick. Samus’s neutral Power Beam she begins her adventure with is not perceived as a puny little pea-shooter; rather, its quick release of energy bullet rounds is essential in dealing with groups of smaller enemies throughout the duration of the game. The energized Wave Beam stuns enemies and provides power to deprived energy circuits with a single blast. The fan-favorite Ice Beam returns as the optimal Metroid vanquisher, and the Plasma Beam disintegrates anything Samus shoots. Each beam, except for the Ice Beam, also has its distinctive Super Missile combination. The traditional one is used alongside the Power Beam while the Wavebuster operates as a destructive taser, and the Flamethrower power with the Plasma beam is pretty self-explanatory. The variety of the beams is also integrated into the Metroidvania progression with doors coinciding with a specific beam to shoot and enter. It adds a nifty layer of inhibiting progress, but I wish the door would revert to the standard blue color after being shot with the correlating beam once so I wouldn’t have to shuffle the beams constantly. Samus’s visors are also a vital aspect of Samus’s inventory as she acquires the heat-vision Thermal Visor that spots enemies in the dark and spotting terminals as well as the X-Ray Visor that unveils invisible platforms. The only upgrade that still stacks are the Power suits, as scrolling through multiple of these would be unnecessary. The question pertaining to Samus’s eclecticism here is if it’s an artistic direction from the developers or if 3D now allows for Samus’s tools to coexist. Either way, if the Metroid series insists on shuffling, it’s much less of a hassle here than in Super Metroid.

One alternate visor I glossed over has a particular use outside of traversal and or combat, and that’s the Scan Visor. On the left side of the D-Pad, a widescreen lens will come into view, and the scannable objects are represented by an orange indicator. Using this visor will list a bevy of information about whatever is scanned, which can include practically everything under Tallon IV’s sun. Samus can trace information about enemy properties, items, surfaces, etc. and compile encyclopedias worth of knowledge. The beauty of the Scan Visor is that besides the occasional elevator activation, using it to gather and store information is optional. This includes the nuggets of Chozo lore etched onto the walls of Tallon IV written in some sort of Sumerian-esque hieroglyphics that the Scan Visor automatically interprets upon scanning. The reason why learning about the world of Tallon IV and its history through the player’s wilful volition is that it allows the world-building through exploration to take center stage as it did in Super Metroid. 3D gaming allowed for more cinematic potential, but bloviating on the world’s context in Metroid Prime would’ve nauseatingly swelled the experience.

If one must know the central story of Metroid Prime that the game doesn’t overtly expound on, the Space Pirates have been adulterating the natural ecosystem of Tallon IV with their presence after the events of the first Metroid game. Yes, it appears that not only is Metroid Prime canon to the 2D games, but the series has also caught the timeline bug from The Legend of Zelda, so it’s even more relieving that the player isn’t forced to get caught up in the delirium with pointless exposition. They’ve been farming for a radioactive element called Phazon and using it to conduct madcap mutations on the wildlife of Tallon IV like a gang of Josef Mengeles, namely on the Metroids they fear. The Space Pirates' final goal is to unlock the eponymous Metroid Prime, the source of the toxic Phazon whose impact annihilated the Chozo people. However, it is locked behind twelve artifact keys located throughout Tallon IV, and Samus must retrieve them to destroy Metroid Prime before the Space Pirates get their grubby, maniacal mitts on it.

I’ll use this opportunity to segway into most people's biggest point of contention with Metroid Prime: constantly backtracking through the five areas of Tallon IV. Naturally, a genre that incentivizes exploration and unlocking paths that were once sealed up will involve a heavy roulette of revisitation, and it’s one of the many appeals of the Metroidvania genre. I don’t inherently find backtracking to be tedious but in the case of Metroid Prime’s final fetch quest, it exposes the design flaws of the game’s world. By this point in the game, Samus has acquired every upgrade possible, so she is free to traverse through any nook and cranny in Tallon IV. Ideally, having the ability to access anywhere on the map without complications should allow the player to breeze through sections with shortcuts, but this is seldom the case. It makes the player realize that Tallon IV is designed competently, but not conveniently. Artifacts are equally distributed in every area, including the far-off Phendrana Drifts. From a design standpoint, it makes sense to position this wintery cliff at the apex of the map. Still, the only connecting area on two stretches of the area is Magmoor Caverns, which seems to be the great median of Tallon IV due to having elevators to the three of four branching areas. The revelation that the hot, overlong hallway is a disappointing area started to dawn on me as well, as I intentionally walked through the lava out of impatience upon successive visitations. Also, revisiting Chozo Ruins is made infuriating by the constant goddamn ghost ambushes, so I recommend trekking through Chozo first to save yourself the migraine of their shrill shrieking. Overall, there are still silver linings to this last quest. The player can still sweep up any last expansions along the way. Compared to the appalling fetch quest from Wind Waker released the same year on the Gamecube which had zero redeeming qualities, the one presented here in Metroid Prime seems fine and dandy.

Besides the collecting of expansions throughout the game, the player should be well prepared to fight the title’s namesake at the core of the Impact Crater because the previous bosses have set a significant precedent. Bosses in Metroid Prime remind me less of the ones from Super Metroid and more from The Legend of Zelda because of the way they are dispatched like puzzles as opposed to inflicting rampant firepower on them. Samus’s eclectic arsenal somewhat mirrors Link’s inventory of items in that the intended method of destroying the titanic foes coincides with a specific upgrade that the player will have to solve and dig through their options to defeat the boss. Similarly to Zelda, the solution mostly relates to the recently obtained upgrades. Flaahgra, the direct source of the toxicity of the ruins, needs a combination of the Charge Shot and Morph Ball to defeat while multiple visors are needed for the rock monster Thardus and the burly Omega Pirate. After Ridley stalls Samus by flaunting his new metallic coat of armor, Samus finds herself at the Impact Crater, which strangely resembles the insides of a mouth from a creature so surreal that it’s indescribable. At the core of the crater lies Metroid Prime, and the two-phased boss fight will have Samus shuffling through her weapons and visors like a Las Vegas blackjack dealer. Unlike the Mother Brain fight in Super Metroid, there is no cinematics to bail out the player, as only a proficient understanding of the FPS mechanics and Samus’s arsenal will lead the player to victory. Once Samus conquers the beast’s vulnerable core, another point of innovation commences. Three possible endings will show, and they will depend on the player’s percentage rate of completion. Unfortunately, multiple endings do not work in a series with an overarching plot and protagonist. At least the game got the homage to the timed escape sequence out of the way at the beginning and decided not to use it again at the end, for it would become a tired cliche.

The initial anxieties revolving around Metroid’s launch into the third dimension were unfairly aggrandized to the point of cataclysmic hyperbole, even if some of Nintendo’s ambitions did sound outlandish. The funny thing is that the aspects of innovation planned for Metroid Prime were rightfully outlandish, yet Retro Studios managed to meet Nintendo’s standards and crafted something incredible. For the other 3D debuts in Nintendo’s library, certain restrictions were placed due to a lack of experience developing games in the realm of 3D to make the transitions feasible. Metroid Prime made no compromises and still delivered something beyond any 3D debut’s expectations. One would think there would understandably be cracks to fill for a first 3D outing, but the foundation of Metroid Prime is as solid as a steel skyscraper. Perhaps it’s a testament to the quality of the Gamecube compared to the N64. Still, the fact that Retro Studios crafted something of this caliber only using Super Metroid as a reference AND formulating it into an FPS game is bewildering. All the while, Retro Studios showcased an immense amount of respect for the series which translated into making the game feel as Metroidy as the previous titles. Retro Studios should be uttered in the breath as Orson Welles and Francis Ford Coppola, as they are examples of the rare, Haley's Comet occurrences of making a masterpiece on their first go-around.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com